Patent ID: 7945647

Claim:
A method for creating a virtual network path, compromising: instantiating a first virtual network interface card (VNIC) for a first virtual machine, wherein the first VNIC and the first virtual machine are located in a first blade of a blade chassis; instantiating a second VNIC for second virtual machine, wherein the second VNIC and the second virtual machine are located in a second blade of the blade chassis, wherein the first blade and the second blade are communicatively coupled with each other via a chassis interconnect of the blade chassis, wherein the chassis interconnect comprises a Peripheral Component Interface Express (PCI-E) backplane comprising a plurality of PCI-E endpoints, wherein the first blade connects to the blade chassis using a first PCI-E endpoint from the plurity of PCI-E endpoints, wherein the second blade connects to the blade chassis using a second PCI-E endpoint from the plurality of PCI-E endpoints, and wherein the first blade and the second blade share a physical network interface; populating a virtual switching table associated with the first VNIC and the second VNIC, wherein the virtual switching table comprises a first mapping of a first Internet Protocol (IP) address for the first VNIC to the first PCI-E endpoint, and wherein the virtual switching table further comprises a second mapping of a second IP address for the second VNIC to the second PCI-E endpoint; and implementing the virtual network path using the virtual switching table, wherein the virtual network path comprises a first virtual wire for sending packets from the first VNIC to the second VNIC.