Unified policy management for extensible virtual switches

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• a plurality of components of a virtual machine implemented in the system and operated by the one or more processors, the components including:
• a management interface configured to receive a settings object, the management interface enabling specification of the settings object and identification of an schema associated with a switch extension of a virtual switch of the virtual machine;
• a serialization component configured to generate a binary representation of the settings object;
• a virtual switch driver of a virtual switch configured to package the binary representation and attributes derived from the schema into a C structure and provide the C structure to the switch extension to enable configuration of the switch extension with one or more settings included in the settings object, and
• a configuration file configured to persist the one or more settings.

One or more computer storage media comprising computer-executable instructions stored thereon and configured to program a computing device to perform operations including:

• receiving, by a root virtual machine, a request for information associated with a switch extension of a virtual switch implemented on the computing device;
• providing, by the root virtual machine, a data structure associated with the request to the switch extension;
• receiving, by the root virtual machine, the data structure in return from the switch extension, the data structure populated with the requested information;
• and
• providing, by the root virtual machine, a response to the request that includes the requested information derived from the data structure.