Patent ID: 8037180

Claim:
A system comprising: a memory; a virtual machine monitor (VMM) centralized control plane (CCP) included in a virtual infrastructure established on plural physical computing apparatus, and spawned using a data center-operating system (DC-OS), the VMM CCP establishing, with a plurality of VMM data planes, including at least a first and second VMM data plane, a single virtual switch across all virtual machines {VMs) within one or more clusters of servers, wherein; the first VMM data plane is associated with a first plurality of VMs and emulates a first linecard interfacing each of the first plurality of VMs to a network, the second VMM data plane is associated with a second, different plurality of VMs and emulates a second linecard interfacing each of the second plurality of VMs to the network, a first server in the one or more clusters hosts the first VMM data plane and the first plurality of VMs, a second server in the one or more clusters hosts the second VMM data plane and the second plurality of VMs, the VMM CCP communicates with the first and second VMM data planes and execute on an appliance remote from the first and second VMM data planes, the VMM CCP emulating a supervisor module of a modular switch chassis including the first and second linecards, and the DC-OS managing communication with at least one redundant appliance that includes at least one standby VMM CCP instance.