Cisco Technology, Inc.

Robert Horst Starmer

Victor Manuel Moreno

Debojyoti Dutta

Sanjay Sane

Subrata Banerjee

Douglas Alan Gourlay

James Anthony Aviani, Jr

Sanjay Agrawal

Lincoln T Dale

Tim Sylvester

A method and apparatus is disclosed for providing gateway anycast virtual MAC reachability in extended subnets. When an extended L2 subnet spans more than one geographical location, it is desirable that the gateway MAC addresses learned in each location be the same across all IP hosts. Accordingly, the gateway MAC address may be preserved (i.e., programmed) in more than one port on a bridge, such as both a local port and a LAN extension port. The bridge may forward traffic having the anycast MAC address to the closest instance of the MAC address, rather than replicating the traffic to the multiple ports on which the anycast MAC address is programmed. If the gateway reachable on the local port goes down, the frame may be forwarded to the local gateway in the second layer 2 subnet over the LAN extension port.

Method for the provision of gateway anycast virtual MAC reachability in extended subnets

Techniques are provided for monitoring the state or status of virtual data centers. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving state information representing the state of hardware devices supporting instantiations of virtual data centers operating within a physical data center. The state information is mapped to hardware devices supporting a selected instantiation of a virtual data center to identify state information for the selected instantiation of a virtual data center. An assessment is then made, based on the state information for the selected instantiation of a virtual data center, regarding a degree to which the selected instantiation of a virtual data center is operating in accordance with predetermined policy. A user is then notified of the assessment via, e.g., a color-coded dashboard representation of the selected instantiation of a virtual data center or a color-coded aspect of the selected instantiation of a virtual data center.

Virtual data center monitoring

Methods and apparatus for processing a service request received from a client are disclosed. When a service request is received, a plurality of packets are transmitted, where each of the plurality of packets identify a different type of service via which to send the corresponding packet. In addition, a mapping of each different type of service to an IP address is preferably maintained, thereby enabling the service request to be processed via an IP address associated with a type of service identified in a first one of the plurality of packets to be received.

Path selection system

Growing community of inventors

Menlo Park, CA, United States of America

Robert Horst Starmer