Patent ID: 8225134

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving an indication of a fault condition relating to a first service running on a first physical device in a computer network, wherein the first service is associated with a first virtual device context defined on the first physical device; and disabling the first service without affecting operation of a second service on the first physical device, wherein the second service is associated with a second virtual device context defined on the first physical device, wherein a first set of physical resources of the first physical device are allocated to the first virtual device context and a second set of physical resources of the first physical device are allocated to the second virtual device context, wherein the second set of resources is manageable only through the second virtual device context and differs from the first set of physical resources, which is manageable only through the first virtual device context, wherein the first service uses a Spanning Tree Protocol running in a Multiple Spanning Tree (MST) mode, the first set of resources comprising a selected subset of a plurality of interfaces of the first physical device so that the MST mode only runs on such selected subset of interfaces without running on other interfaces of the first physical device.