Patent ID: 8634415

Claim:
A method for routing network traffic for a blade server chassis, comprising: receiving a first packet by a network express manager (NEM) executing on a processor for the blade server chassis, wherein the blade server chassis comprises the NEM, a chassis interconnect, a plurality of blades operatively connected to the chassis interconnect, and a physical network interface card (PNIC), and wherein a first packet header for the first packet specifies a first Layer 2 (L2) address, a first Layer 3 (L3) address, and a first Layer 4 (L4) L4 address; obtaining, by the NEM, the first L2 address, the first L3 address, and the first L4 address from the first packet; obtaining, by the NEM, a first mapping that associates the first L2 address with a first network function; obtaining, by the NEM, a second mapping that associates the first network function with a first configuration; generating, by the NEM, a first key based on the first network function, the first L3 address, and the first L4 address; obtaining, by the NEM, a third mapping that associates the first key with a first policy; making a first determination, by the NEM, to transmit the first packet based on the first policy; and based on the first determination: selecting, by the NEM, a first direct memory access (DMA) engine for transmitting the first packet based on the first configuration, and transmitting, by the NEM, the first packet to a first blade from the plurality of blades using the first DMA engine and the first network function.