Patent ID: 8086739

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising a plurality of executable instructions for monitoring virtual wires, wherein the plurality of executable instructions comprises instructions to: select a first virtual wire to monitor, wherein the first virtual wire connects a first virtual network interface card (VNIC) located on a first blade to a second VNIC located on a second blade, wherein the first blade and the second blade are connected to a blade chassis, and wherein the first virtual wire is implemented by the blade chassis; collect usage statistics associated with the first virtual wire; and perform a first action using the collected usage statistics associated with the first virtual wire, wherein the blade chassis comprises a Peripheral Component Interface Express (PCI-E) backplane, a network express manager (NEM), and a virtual switching table (VST), wherein the VST comprises a first mapping of a first Internet Protocol (IP) address for the first VNIC to a first PCI-E endpoint on the PCI-E backplane, and a second mapping of a second IP address for the second VNIC to a second PCI-E endpoint on the PCI-E backplane, wherein the first blade connects to the blade chassis using the first PCI-E endpoint and the second blade connects to the blade chassis using the second PCI-E endpoint and wherein the NEM, using the VST, implements the first virtual wire to only allow packets sent from the first VNIC to be transmitted to the second VNIC.