Overlay network capable of supporting storage area network (SAN) traffic

A computer program product, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions being executable by a processor to cause the processor to:

• communicate, by the processor, with a central controller, the central controller being a Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) controller;
• communicate, by the processor, with a converge network adapter (CNA) coupled to a hypervisor layer of a server, the hypervisor layer comprising an overlay-configured virtual switch and a Fibre Channel (FC) virtual switch;
• receive, by the processor, a block of media access control (MAC) addresses for use in local fabric initialization protocol (FIP) operations, the local FIP operations comprising assigning MAC addresses to local Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) initiators;
• and
• advertise, by the processor, to all local FCoE initiators to route FCoE traffic to the FC virtual switch by asserting the overlay-configured virtual switch as a Fibre Channel forwarder (FCF) for any requesting FCoE initiators.

A system, comprising:

• a server, comprising:
• a hypervisor layer, comprising:
• an overlay-configured virtual switch;
• and
• a Fibre Channel (FC) virtual switch;
• at least one processor configured to execute logic;
• and
• a converge network adapter (CNA) coupled to the hypervisor layer, the CNA being configured to communicate with the overlay-configured virtual switch and the FC virtual switch, and wherein the CNA is configured to communicate with a FC forwarder (FCF),
• wherein the overlay-configured virtual switch comprises:
• logic configured to communicate with a Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) controller;
• logic configured to receive a block of media access control (MAC) addresses for use in local fabric initialization protocol (FIP) operations from the DOVE controller, the local FIP operations comprising assigning MAC addresses to local Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)initiators;
• and
• logic configured to advertise to all local FCoE initiators to route FCoE traffic to the server by asserting the overlay-configured virtual switch as a Fibre Channel forwarder (FCF) for any requesting FCoE initiators.