Patent ID: 8805990

Claim:
At a computer system that includes one or more processors and system memory, the computer system being configured as a load balancer that controls the routing of network packets between virtual addresses and destination addresses, a method for configuring load balancing for a virtual address, the method comprising: an act of the load balancer detecting that a virtual address that is being managed by the load balancer is associated with only a single destination address; in response to detecting, an act of the load balancer setting a flag for the virtual address to distinguish the virtual address from other virtual addresses that are associated with a plurality of destination addresses; in response to detecting, an act of the load balancer sending a configuration message to a router, the configuration message interpretable by the router as an instruction to send network packets that are addressed to the virtual address to the destination address in a manner that bypasses the load balancer; subsequent to sending the configuration message to the router, an act of the load balancer refraining from storing subsequent flow state for the virtual address; an act of the load balancer detecting that said virtual address that is being managed by the load balancer is to be scaled up from being associated with only a first destination address to being associated with at least an additional second destination address; in response to detecting, an act of the load balancer setting a new flag for the virtual address to distinguish the virtual address from other virtual addresses that are associated with a single destination address; in response to detecting, an act of the load balancer sending a new configuration message to a router, the new configuration message interpretable by the router as an instruction to send network packets that are addressed to the virtual address to the load balancer, and cease a previous practice to bypass the load balancer for network packets that are addressed to the virtual address; and subsequent to sending the new configuration message to the router, an act of the load balancer storing flow state for said virtual address.