US 2018/0123954 A1Published application

Virtualization Port Layer Including Physical Switch Port and Logical Switch Port

AssigneeNicira, Inc.

InventorsJingchun Jason JIANG, Donghai HAN

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Abstract

Aspects of the present disclosure relate to introduction of a physical switch port and logical switch port to the virtualization layer. A virtual network interface card (VNIC) can be associated with a physical switch port that routes traffic to logical switch ports based on a transmit function. The logical switch ports each are associated with a filtering protocol and route traffic to a physical switch port based on a receive function associated with that logical switch port. The logical switch ports can be associated with container running on the virtual machine (VM) connected to the VNIC. Thus, a single VNIC can be shared by multiple containers running different filtering protocols. A single logical port can also route traffic to multiple physical switch ports, each associated with a different VNIC. Thus, a same filtering protocol can be shared by multiple VNICs.

Claims28

Dependent claims

A method for exchanging packets in a virtual data center, the method comprising:

sending a first one or more data packets from at least a first virtual network interface card (VNIC) of a first virtual machine (VM) to a network location via a virtual switch comprising one or more physical switch ports and one or more logical switch ports, wherein the sending comprises sending the first one or more data packets to one of the physical switch ports associated with the VNIC, wherein the one of the physical switch ports forwards the first one or more data packets to one or more of the logical switch ports according to a transmit function associated with the physical switch port, and wherein each of the one or more logical switch ports applies a filtering protocol associated with that logical switch port;
and
receiving a second one or more data packets via the virtual switch, wherein the receiving comprises receiving the second one or more data packets from the network location at one of the logical switch ports, wherein the one of the logical switch ports applies a filtering protocol associated with that logical switch port and forwards the one or more data packets to one or more of the physical switch ports according to a receive function associated with the logical switch port.

A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions to be executed in a computer system, wherein the instructions when executed in the computer system perform a method for exchanging packets in a virtual data center, the method comprising:

sending a first one or more data packets from at least a first virtual network interface card (VNIC) of a first virtual machine (VM) to a network location via a virtual switch comprising one or more physical switch ports and one or more logical switch ports, wherein the sending comprises sending the first one or more data packets to one of the physical switch ports associated with the VNIC, wherein the one of the physical switch ports forwards the first one or more data packets to one or more of the logical switch ports according to a transmit function associated with the physical switch port, and wherein each of the one or more logical switch ports applies a filtering protocol associated with that logical switch port;
and
receiving a second one or more data packets via the virtual switch, wherein the receiving comprises receiving the second one or more data packets from the network location at one of the logical switch ports, wherein the one of the logical switch ports applies a filtering protocol associated with that logical switch port and forwards the one or more data packets to one or more of the physical switch ports according to a receive function associated with the logical switch port.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.