Patent ID: 9043792
Filing Date: 2015-05-26
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
1. A method performed in a computer system, the computer system comprising virtualization software that supports a first virtual machine (VM) and a second VM, the virtualization software providing the first VM with a first virtual network interface and providing the second VM with a second virtual network interface, wherein the first VM includes a first network interface card (NIC) driver loaded into the first VM and the second VM includes a second NIC driver loaded into the second VM, the method comprising: communicating, by a NIC manager, information related to a virtual local area network (VLAN) configuration to a VLAN coordinator; applying, by the NIC manager or the VLAN coordinator, a specified policy for automatically detecting and responding to issues related to the VLAN configuration; receiving, at the VLAN coordinator, outgoing network frames from the first and second NIC drivers, the VLAN coordinator being a component of the virtualization software; modifying the outgoing network frames, at the VLAN coordinator, by writing a first VLAN identifier associated with the first VM into the outgoing network frames received from the first NIC driver and writing a second VLAN identifier associated with the second VM into the outgoing network frames received from the second NIC driver, wherein the first VM is within a first VLAN and the second VM is within a second VLAN, wherein the first VLAN identifier restricts transmission of the outgoing network frames from the first NIC driver to the first VLAN associated with the first VLAN identifier, wherein the second VLAN identifier restricts transmission of the outgoing network frames from the second NIC driver to the second VLAN associated with the second VLAN identifier, wherein the modifying occurs outside of a domain of the first VM and the second VM, and wherein modifying the outgoing network frames is transparent to the first VM and the second VM; transmitting the modified outgoing network frames over one or more physical networks, the transmitting being performed by one or more physical network interfaces connected to the computer system and the one or more physical networks; receiving, at the VLAN coordinator, incoming network frames from the one or more physical networks; for each of the incoming network frames, determining whether the incoming network frame includes the first VLAN identifier or the second VLAN identifier; when the received incoming network frame includes the first VLAN identifier, removing, at the VLAN coordinator, the first VLAN identifier from the received incoming network frame and then conveying the received incoming network frame to the first VM via the first NIC driver; and when the received incoming network frame includes the second VLAN identifier, removing, at the VLAN coordinator, the second VLAN identifier from the received incoming network frame and then conveying the received incoming network frame to the second VM via the second NIC driver.