Patent ID: 8677023

Claim:
A resource virtualization switch, comprising: an I/O bus switch connected to a plurality of external servers through a plurality of I/O bus ports, each of the plurality of external servers comprising a separate memory address space, the plurality of external servers including a first server running a first application and a second server running a second application; a plurality of network interface cards (NICs) connected to a PCI-Express bus switch; a virtual network chip of a server platform connected to the plurality of I/O bus ports of the I/O bus switch and the plurality of NICs, wherein the plurality of NICs are accessible to the plurality of external servers as virtual NICs (VNICs) through the virtual network chip of the server platform, wherein a plurality of VNICs are assigned to the first application to allow for path redundancy in the event a particular NIC fails; a processor subsystem configured to initialize an internet protocol (IP) network connection through a first NIC regardless of whether any of the plurality of external servers are connected to the resource virtualization switch.