1146 results about "Virtual switch" patented technology

A storage controller has at least one physical data port for a data network including host processors. The storage controller is programmed to provide a plurality of virtual ports for access to storage, and a virtual switch for routing storage access requests from the physical port to the virtual ports. The virtual ports and the virtual switch are defined by software. The virtual ports appear to the hosts as physical ports in the data network. For example, in a Fiber-Channel network, the virtual ports have World Wide Names (WWNs) and are assigned temporary addresses (S_Ds), and the virtual switch provides a name server identifying the WWNs and S_IDs of the virtual ports. For convenient partitioning of storage among host processors, one or more virtual ports are assigned to each host, and a set of storage volumes are made accessible from each virtual port. A host can access storage at a virtual port only if the virtual port has been assigned to the host. Preferably, storage can be accessed through each virtual port by no more than one assigned host, although a shared volume may be accessible from more than one virtual port. The storage controller may provide a service for reporting to a host the virtual ports through which the host can access storage, and the storage volumes that are accessible to the host through each of the virtual ports.

In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a processor configured for operation in a control plane in a distributed virtual switch in communication with a plurality of virtual machines each having a virtual interface. The processor is operable to identify other control planes in the distributed virtual switch, assign a virtual interface identifier to one of the virtual interfaces, receive a configuration for the virtual interface, and share the configuration with the other control planes in the distributed virtual switch. The virtual interface identifier provides a unique identifier for the virtual interface across all of the control planes. The apparatus further includes memory for storing the configuration of the virtual interface. A method for operating a network device associated with a control in the distributed virtual switch is also disclosed.

In one embodiment, an apparatus configured for communication with a plurality of virtual machines includes a virtual switch in communication with one or more of the virtual machines, an interface in communication with one or more of the virtual machines and configured for communication with a hardware implemented switch, and a mode selector for assigning to each of the virtual machines, a mode of operation for forwarding data from the virtual machine and switching the assigned mode of operation at one or more of the virtual machines. The mode of operation is selected from a first mode wherein the data is forwarded by the hardware implemented switch and a second mode wherein the data is forwarded by the virtual switch.

A plurality of virtual machines execute on a network of physical computers. The virtual machines are deployed in fenced and unfenced configurations across multiple physical computers. Host level virtual network devices execute on the physical computers, and intercept the virtual machine network traffic. For each fenced configuration of virtual machines, a distributed virtual switch transmits network traffic between the virtual machines deployed in that fenced configuration, and a virtual router routes network traffic between virtual machines deployed in that fenced configuration and external components.

Methods and systems for implementing private allocated networks in a virtual infrastructure are presented. One method operation creates virtual switches in one or more hosts in the virtual infrastructure. Each port in the virtual switches is associated with a private allocated network (PAN) from a group of possible PANs. In one embodiment, one or more PANs share the same physical media for data transmission. The intranet traffic within each PAN is not visible to nodes that are not connected to the each PAN. In another operation, the method defines addressing mode tables for the intranet traffic within each PAN. The entries in the addressing mode tables define addressing functions for routing the intranet traffic between the virtual switches, and different types of addressing functions are supported by the virtual switches.

Packet switch operating methods and packet switches receive a plurality of packets using a forwarding plane of the packet switch. Each packet of the plurality conforms to a different one of a plurality of forwarding information formats. The methods and packet switches modify each packet of the plurality to conform to a common forwarding information format instead of a respective one of the plurality of forwarding information formats and forward the modified packets of the plurality to a control plane of the packet switch.

Processing is allocated within a distributed telecommunications at two levels—the component level and the process level. At the component level, a virtual switch is employed to route service requests to one of a group of components that are configured to process the service request. The decision can be made autonomously by the virtual switch or entirely based on information provided by the component or even by a combination of both. At the process level, each component establishes multiple instances of the serving process and then selects one instance to process the service requests. The component monitors the processing burden of the instance of the process and if a degradation in performance is anticipated, the component selects an alternative instance of the serving process to handle subsequent requests.

A method and an apparatus of hypervisor level distributed load-balancing are disclosed. In one aspect, a method includes determining a location to direct a packet. The method also includes distributing the packet to process the packet through a processor. The method also includes assigning the packet to a guest such that a distribution of the packet to the guest is based on an algorithm. The method further includes altering a first destination address of the packet to a second destination address. The second destination address may be based on a virtual network interface of the guest. The method further includes convincing the guest the packet is from a virtual switch based on the second destination address. In addition, the method includes adjusting the distribution of the packet to the guest. The method also includes reducing a load of the guest through the adjustment.

A Virtual Communication Environment to support virtual switching engines for layer 2 switches is described. The virtual layer 2 switching engines allow many virtual switches to be created in a CPU or across multiple CPUs in switching hardware. The virtual switch engines reduce the inter-communication costs in memory, CPU, inter-process bandwidth, and fabric bandwidth. This reduction in the cost per Virtual Switch device allows either more virtual switches to be contained within a control plane or more applications per switch control plane.

One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a management mechanism and a configuration mechanism. During operation, the management mechanism is configured to operate the switch in conjunction with the partner switch as a single logical switch. The configuration mechanism is configured to assign a virtual switch identifier to the logical switch.

An information handling system is provided. The information handling system includes a first hypervisor running on a first server and a second hypervisor running on a second server. The first hypervisor manages a first virtual switch and has an overlay forwarding table in memory supporting at least one virtual machine, while the second hypervisor manages a second virtual switch and also has the overlay forwarding table in memory and supports at least one other VM. The information handling system further includes a plurality of gateway devices coupled to the hypervisors. The gateway devices share a floating address and are configured to export a host route, associated with the address, into a corresponding entry in an underlay routing table to redirect network traffic from a first gateway device to a second gateway device.

In accordance with an embodiment, a data processing system includes a processor, a memory, and an interface port configured to be coupled to a hardware network interface device. The processor is configured to run a process that maps network switching functions of each of a plurality of virtual machines to the hardware network interface device.

In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a port channel manager for receiving information identifying switches connected to a group of physical ports at a network device and creating subgroups each comprising the physical ports connected to one of the switches. The apparatus further includes a virtual interface agent for assigning a virtual interface connecting a virtual switch to a virtual machine, to one of the subgroups. Traffic received from the virtual machine on the virtual interface is transmitted to one of the switches on one of the physical ports in the assigned subgroup. A method for grouping ports for association with virtual interfaces is also disclosed.

One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a forwarding mechanism and a control mechanism. During operation, the forwarding mechanism forwards frames based on their Ethernet headers. The control mechanism operates the switch in conjunction with a separate physical switch as a single logical switch and assigns a virtual switch identifier to the logical switch, wherein the virtual switch identifier is associated with a link aggregation group.

Systems and methods are described for providing network route redundancy through Layer 2 devices, such as a loop free Layer 2 network having a plurality of switching devices. A virtual switch is coupled to the loop free Layer 2 network, the virtual switch having two or more switches configured to transition between master and backup modes to provide redundant support for the loop free Layer 2 network, the switches communicating their status through use of a plurality of redundancy control packets. The system also includes means for allowing the redundancy control packets to be flooded through the Layer 2 network. The means may include time-to-live data attached to the redundancy control packet which is decremented only when the packets are transferred through devices which are configured to recognize the protocol used in redundancy control packets.

Systems and methods are described for providing network route redundancy through Layer 2 devices, such as a loop free Layer 2 network having a plurality of switching devices. A virtual switch is coupled to the loop free Layer 2 network, the virtual switch having two or more switches configured to transition between master and backup modes to provide redundant support for the loop free Layer 2 network, the switches communicating their status through use of a plurality of redundancy control packets. The system also includes means for allowing the redundancy control packets to be flooded through the Layer 2 network. The means may include time-to-live data attached to the redundancy control packet which is decremented only when the packets are transferred through devices which are configured to recognize the protocol used in redundancy control packets.

An information handling system is provided. The information handling system includes a first hypervisor running on a first host and a second hypervisor running on a second host. The first hypervisor managing a first virtual switch, and the second hypervisor managing a second virtual switch. The information handling system also includes a plurality of virtual machines (VMs), including a first VM, which is part of a first tenant, running on the first host, and a second VM, part of a second tenant, running on the second host. The first virtual switch has a mapping in memory that maps a customer-specific multicast IP address, used by the plurality of VMs to indicate a multicast group that includes VMs on the first and second tenants, to a global multicast IP address used by the first and second hosts.

In one embodiment, a method includes detecting a virtual resource hosted by a host device, selecting a configuration template associated with the virtual resource, and providing a provisioning instruction to a virtual switch module hosted by the host device based on the configuration template. The host device is operatively coupled to a network device. The detecting is at the network device; the selecting is at the network device; and the providing is at the network device. The virtual switch module is in communication with the virtual resource. The configuration template associated with the virtual resource is selected from a library of configuration templates accessible to the network device.

A method for configuring a communication port of a communications interface of an information handling system into a plurality of virtual ports. A first command is issued to obtain information indicating a number of images of virtual ports supportable by the communications interface. A second command is then issued requesting the communications interface to virtualize the communication port. In response to the second command, one or more virtual switches are then configured to connect to the communication port, each virtual switch including a plurality of virtual ports, such that the one or more virtual switches are configured in a manner sufficient to support the number of images of virtual ports indicated by the obtained information. Thereafter, upon request via issuance of a third command, a logical link is established between one of the virtual ports of one of the virtual switches and a communicating element of the information handling system.

A system and method detects and responds to failures occurring in a virtual switch. The virtual switch is formed from two or more physical switches interconnected by a Virtual Switch Link (VSL). One physical switch is elected the Master, and it executes a link aggregation protocol for the virtual switch. If the VSL fails, one of the other physical switches assumes that it should become the Master for the virtual switch, and it begins executing the link aggregation protocol. By adding information unique to the physical switches in the control packets of the link aggregation protocol, remote switches can identify when the VSL fails, and report this condition to the original Master. In response, the original Master or the new Master takes corrective action.

A management computer for managing configuration of servers for connection to a switch comprises a port discovery module to: instruct a target server, for connection to a target switch port, to create a virtual adapter on a virtual switch associated with a physical NIC in the target server; obtain a list of VLAN IDs on all switch ports; select one or more VLAN IDs from the list based on a preset policy; set one such VLAN ID onto the virtual adapter; instruct the target server to manipulate the virtual adapter to send a packet with the set VLAN ID to the target switch port; if the switch accepted the packet sent to the target switch port, update a switch port mapping using the set VLAN ID as a discovered VLAN ID to map the physical NIC associated with the virtual adapter to the target switch port having the discovered VLAN ID.

A method is provided for configuring a communication port of a communications interface of an information handling system into a plurality of virtual ports. A first command is issued to obtain information indicating a number of images of virtual ports supportable by the communications interface. A second command is then issued requesting the communications interface to virtualize the communication port. In response to the second command, one or more virtual switches are then configured to connect to the communication port, each virtual switch including a plurality of virtual ports, such that the one or more virtual switches are configured in a manner sufficient to support the number of images of virtual ports indicated by the obtained information. Thereafter, upon request via issuance of a third command, a logical link is established between one of the virtual ports of one of the virtual switches and a communicating element of the information handling system.

Methods, software, and apparatus for implementing local service chaining (LSC) with virtual machines (VMs) or virtualized containers in Software Defined Networking (SDN). In one aspect a method is implemented on a compute platform including a plurality of VMs or containers, each including a virtual network interface controller (vNIC) communicatively coupled to a virtual switch in an SDN. LSCs are implemented via a plurality of virtual network appliances hosted by the plurality of VMs or containers. Each LCS comprises a sequence (chain) of services performed by virtual network appliances defined for the LSC. In connection with performing the chain of services, packet data is forwarded between VMs or containers using a cut-through mechanisms under which packet data is directly written to receive (Rx) buffers on the vNICs in a manner that bypasses the virtual switch. LSC indicia (e.g., through LSC tags) and flow tables are used to inform each virtual network appliance and / or or its host VM or container of the next vNIC Rx buffer or Rx port to which packet data is to be written.

A shadow network, which can be a virtual reproduction of a real, physical, base computer network, is described. Shadow networks duplicate the topology, services, host, and network traffic of the base network using shadow hosts, which are low interaction, minimal-resource-using host emulators. The shadow networks are connected to the base network through virtual switches, etc. in order to form a large obfuscated network. When a hacker probes into a host emulator, a more resource-intensive virtual machine can be swapped in to take its place. When a connection is attempted from a host emulator to a physical computer, the a host emulator can step in to take the place of the physical computer, and software defined networking (SDN) can prevent collisions between the duplicated IP addresses. Replicating the shadow networks within the network introduces problems for hackers and allows a system administrator easier ways to identify intrusions.

Embodiments of the invention relate to providing default gateway virtualization in a distributed overlay virtual environment. One embodiment includes a method that includes creating a packet by a first virtual machine (VM) including a first destination address. The packet is received from the first VM by a first virtual switch. A second destination address for a second VM is obtained by the first virtual switch based on information in the packet. The first destination address in the packet is replaced with the second destination address. The packet is encapsulated using a header that is addressed for a second virtual switch.

Methods and systems for permitting a controller within a virtualization environment to control access to devices virtualized within hardware are described herein. For example, a NIC may be able to request rules that define how network traffic is managed at the NIC's virtual switch. In some arrangements, the NIC may transmit a query for the matching rule to a proxy, which may determine whether it has a rule matching the request. If the proxy does not have a matching rule, the proxy may query a controller for the matching rule, which may transmit the rule to the proxy. The proxy may update its store of rules and transmit the matching rule to the NIC. Upon receipt of the matching rule, the NIC may update the rules stored in its virtual switch and may process the packet in accordance with the matching rule.