Scalable virtual appliance cloud (SVAC) and devices usable in an SVAC

A system, comprising:

• a scalable virtual appliance cloud (SVAC)comprising:
• at least one distributed line card (DLC);
• at least one switch fabric coupler (SFC) in communication with the at least one DLC;
• and
• at least one controller in communication with the at least one DLC,
• wherein one or more of the at least one DLC is an appliance DLC configured to provide various deep packet inspection services, including firewall services, server load balancing services, and virtual private network (VPN) services,
• wherein one or more of the at least one SFC is a central SFC,
• wherein one or more of the at least one DLC is a switching DLC configured to apply Access Control Lists (ACLs) on each switching interface to direct certain received packets to the one or more appliance DLC for performing the deep packet inspection services,
• wherein the one or more appliance DLC and the one or more switching DLC are connected to the at least one central SFC, and
• wherein the SVAC appears to a device external of the SVAC as a single appliance device applying various services to a traffic flow.