Automated virtual subnet delegation in a cloud environment

Abstract

The technology described herein is directed towards automatic virtual subnet delegation. An automated process scans the subnets of a virtual network and builds a tree of the IP space, including allocated and unused space designations. User-defined parameters and organization policy data are used to determine the number of IP addresses needed for an application or the like. By traversing the tree of existing IP space, the technology described herein finds and places a new subnet, such as to ensure a high utilization of the overall IP space or based on an alternative type-of-fit criterion. When the virtual subnet space is created in the cloud, a public cloud-specific subnet identifier is returned to the user to utilize in deploying the application. Another use of the technology described herein is to track and optimize IP space allocation for existing virtual networks in the public cloud, including to identify underutilized and/or improperly-sized subnets.