Apparatus and method of switching packets between virtual ports

A network switch, comprising:

• A downlink physical port connected by a physical link to a physical network input/output (I/O) adapter of a physical machine having an end-node operating thereon;
• an uplink physical port coupled to a network;
• a management module uniquely assigning a virtual port to end-node;
• and
• a switching fabric device receiving, over the physical link from the physical network I/O adapter, a data unit that arrives on the physical downlink port from the end-node, switching the received data unit from the downlink physical port to the downlink virtual port assigned to the end-node switching the data unit, from the downlink virtual port, to an uplink virtual port, and switching the data unit to an uplink physical port for subsequent forwarding of the data unit towards a destination of the data unit
• wherein a plurality of uplink virtual ports may be associated with the uplink physical port.

A chipset including one or more semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) chips, the chipset for use in switching data units on a network switch having a physical port, the chipset comprising:

• a circuit configured to assign a unique downlink virtual port to each end-node identified to be operating on a physical machine having a physical network input/output (I/O) adapter that is connected by a physical link to the physical port of the network switch;
• a circuit configured to receive and examine a data unit arriving at the physical port sent from a given end-node operating on the physical machine through the physical network I/O adapter of the physical machine;
• a circuit configured to switch the data unit from the physical port to the unique downlink virtual port assigned to the given end-node;
• and
• a circuit configured to switch the data unit from the downlink virtual port to an uplink virtual port, and switch the data unit from the uplink virtual port based on the virtual port assigned to the given end-node, to an uplink physical port for subsequent forwarding of the data unit towards a destination of the data unit, wherein a plurality of uplink virtual ports may share a single uplink physical port.

A system of networked machines for providing a computational, storage, and networking center of an organization, the system comprising:

• a physical machine having a physical network input/output (I/O) adapter and operating a plurality of end-nodes;
• and
• a network switch comprising an downlink physical port connected to the physical network input/output (I/O) adapter of the physical machine by a physical link, acquires information about each end-node operating on the physical machine, uses the information to assign a unique downlink virtual port to each end-node, associates each virtual port individually with a network policy, the physical port receiving data units over the physical link from the physical network I/O adapter;
• and
• a switching fabric processing the data units received through the downlink physical port from each end-node operating on the physical machine in accordance with the network policy associated with the unique downlink virtual port assigned to that end-node, switching the data unit from the downlink virtual port to an uplink virtual port;
• and forwarding the data unit from the uplink virtual port to an uplink physical port coupled to a network, wherein a plurality of uplink virtual ports may share a single physical port.