Configuring pnic to perform flow processing offload using virtual port identifiers

Abstract

Some embodiments of the invention provide a method for configuring a physical network card or physical network controller (pNIC) to provide flow processing offload (FPO) for a host computer connected to the pNIC. The host computers host a set of compute nodes in a virtual network. The set of compute nodes are each associated with a set of interfaces that are each assigned a locally-unique virtual port identifier (VPID) by a flow processing and action generator. The pNIC includes a set of interfaces that are assigned physical port identifiers (PPIDs) by the pNIC. The method includes providing the pNIC with a set of mappings between VPIDs and PPIDs. The method also includes sending updates to the mappings as compute nodes migrate, connect to different interfaces of the pNIC, are assigned different VPIDs, etc.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.