Patent ID: 7933983

Claim:
A system for load balancing network resources in a data center, comprising: a plurality of virtual local area networks (VLANs) including first and second VLANs, wherein each VLAN comprises an independent network of components associated with its respective enterprise; a control plane coupled to the first and second VLANs, wherein the control plane initially allocates a first set of network resources to the first VLAN and allocates a second set of network resources to the second VLAN based on enterprise requirements; means for collecting performance metrics from the first set of network resources and second set of network resources, wherein the collected performance metrics comprise one or more of CPU usage, memory usage and throughput; and means for performing load analysis using the collected performance metrics and corresponding pre-determined performance thresholds for load balancing the first and second set of network resources, wherein the control plane automatically reallocates a network resource from the first set of network resources to the second set of network resources if the collected performance metric associated with the network resource is less than its corresponding pre-determined performance threshold and if the network resource is required by the second VLAN.