Patent ID: 11882000
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 19:
20. A network management system for managing a logical network that spans a plurality of physical sites, the network management system comprising:
a global network manager for receiving global logical network configuration data for the plurality of physical sites, the global logical network configuration comprising a set of policies defining elements of the logical network; and
at each of the physical sites:
a local network manager for receiving a logical network configuration for the physical site from the global network manager, wherein the logical network configuration for a particular physical site comprises a subset of the policies that pertain to the particular physical site; and
a set of central controllers for distributing logical network configuration data to computing devices that implement the logical network at the physical site, wherein, at the particular physical site:

the local network manager converts the subset of the policies into the logical network configuration data and provides the logical network configuration data to the set of central controllers; and
the set of central controllers determine which computing devices require which logical network configuration data and distribute the appropriate logical network configuration data to the computing devices.