Patent ID: 11962499
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 0:
1. A computer-implemented method for enabling a service virtual machine to provide one or more services for a plurality of tenants, the method comprising:
detecting a packet by a service inserter implemented in a hypervisor that is a software layer that supports an execution of the service virtual machine;
based on metadata received along with the packet, identifying, by the service inserter, a tenant identifier;
determining, by the service inserter, a plurality of attributes of the packet;
based on the tenant identifier and the plurality of attributes of the packet, retrieving, by the service inserter, an action for the packet from a rule table;
based on the action, determining, by the service inserter, whether at least one service is to be applied to the packet;
in response to determining that the at least one service is to be applied to the packet:
making, by the service inserter, a copy of the packet;
storing the copy of the packet;
generating, by the service inserter, an encapsulated packet by encapsulating the packet with the tenant identifier;
directing, by the service inserter, the encapsulated packet to a service machine that is configured to provide the at least one service to the encapsulated packet;
upon receiving, by the service inserter, a result from the service machine providing the at least one service to the encapsulated packet:
determining, by the service inserter based on the result, whether to forward the encapsulated packet toward a packet destination or drop the encapsulated packet; and
in response to determining that the encapsulated packet is to be forwarded toward the packet destination, deleting or overwriting the encapsulated packet and forwarding, by the service inserter, the copy of the packet toward the packet destination; and
in response to determining that the encapsulated packet is to be dropped, deleting, by the service inserter, the copy of the packet and deleting or overwriting the encapsulated packet.