Vmware, Inc.

Nicira, Inc.

YiSan Zhao

Nan Wang

Wen Jie Wang

Shengbo Teng

Jingtao Zhang

Jian Lan

Xiangrui Meng

Peter Zhang

Described herein are systems, methods, and software to enhance firewall implementation for virtual machines. In one implementation, a method of managing firewall rules for a virtual machine includes identifying, in the virtual machine, an attach process for one or more applications to the virtual machine. The method further includes, identifying one or more firewall rules that correspond to the one or more applications and providing the one or more firewall rules to networking manager for the virtual machine.

Application based firewall rule service

A method of establishing a secure communication channel from a first edge device that is in a first network zone across a secure overlay network to a second edge device that is in a second network zone, so that access to a computing device that is in the second network zone can be authenticated by an authentication service that is in the first network zone, includes the steps of establishing a first secure communication channel from the first edge device to the secure overlay network, receiving a request to join the secure overlay network along with administrator credential information and, responsive to the request, transmitting the administrator credential information to the authentication service for authentication through the first secure communication channel and the first edge device, and establishing a second secure communication channel from the second edge device to the secure overlay network if the authentication is received from the authentication service.

Accessing an authentication service from a cloud domain in a network zone different from that of the authentication service

Described herein are systems, methods, and software to enhance network traffic management for virtual machines. In one implementation, a network policy controller may maintain firewall rules at one or more hosts of a computing environment, wherein the firewall rules define network packet forwarding policies for application groups available to virtual machines in the environment. The network policy controller further identifies an application group for attachment to one or more virtual machines, and in response to the identification, adds the one or more virtual machines to a security group for a firewall wall rule corresponding to the application group.

Application attachment based firewall management

Example methods are provided for host to implement application-based network segmentation in a virtualized computing environment. The method may comprise detecting an egress packet from a virtualized computing instance supported by the host for transmission to a destination and identifying a source application associated with the egress packet. The source application may be one of multiple applications supported by the virtualized computing instance, the multiple applications being associated with respective target networks. The method may further comprise, based on a network policy configured for the source application, determining a particular target network associated with the source application; and sending, to the destination, the egress packet via a physical network interface controller (NIC) associated with the particular target network.

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Beijing, China

YiSan Zhao