Patent ID: 8095661

Claim:
A method for scaling an application, comprising: executing a first instance of the application on a first blade in a blade chassis, wherein the first instance of the application is associated with a first virtual network interface card (VNIC) and a second VNIC executing on the first blade; loading a second instance of the application on a second blade in the blade chassis, wherein the second instance of the application is associated with a third VNIC and a fourth VNIC executing on the second blade; re-programming a network express manager (NEM) to direct a portion of network traffic directed to the first VNIC to the third VNIC; and executing the second instance of the application after the re-programming, wherein the blade chassis comprises a Peripheral Component Interface Express (PCI-E) backplane, the NEM, and a virtual switching table (VST), wherein the first blade connects to the blade chassis using a first PCI-E endpoint and the second blade connects to the blade chassis using a second PCI-E endpoint, and wherein reprogramming the NEM to direct a portion of network traffic directed to the first VNIC to the third VNIC comprises: creating, in the VST, a first mapping of a first Internet Protocol (IP) address for the third VNIC to the second PCI-E endpoint on the PCI-E backplane.