Method and apparatus for managing MAC address generation for virtualized environments
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A method of managing MAC addresses, comprising:
- defining first and second MAC address pools, the first MAC address pool provisioned for a first virtualized computer system by a first allocation module and defined by at least a first range of MAC addresses, and the second MAC address pool provisioned for a second virtualized computer system by a second allocation module and defined by at least a second range of MAC addresses that does not overlap with the first range; and
adjusting sizes of the first and second MAC address pools, wherein said adjusting includes programmatically contracting the first range by the first allocation module and programmatically expanding the second range by the second allocation module to include MAC addresses that were in the first range prior to contraction thereof.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
MAC addresses are flexibly and dynamically allocated across groups of devices that need MAC addresses. MAC address pools are defined for the groups by non-overlapping ranges of MAC addresses. The range of MAC addresses defined for any pool may be shrunk to support an expansion of the range of MAC addresses of another pool. The maximum number of universally-administered MAC addresses that can be defined for any MAC address pool is greater than 216, and the maximum number of locally-administered MAC addresses that can be defined for any MAC address pool is greater than 238.
-
Citations
18 Claims
-
1. A method of managing MAC addresses, comprising:
-
defining first and second MAC address pools, the first MAC address pool provisioned for a first virtualized computer system by a first allocation module and defined by at least a first range of MAC addresses, and the second MAC address pool provisioned for a second virtualized computer system by a second allocation module and defined by at least a second range of MAC addresses that does not overlap with the first range; and adjusting sizes of the first and second MAC address pools, wherein said adjusting includes programmatically contracting the first range by the first allocation module and programmatically expanding the second range by the second allocation module to include MAC addresses that were in the first range prior to contraction thereof. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
-
-
8. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions for causing a computer system to carry out a method of managing MAC addresses, comprising:
-
defining first and second MAC address pools, the first MAC address pool provisioned for a first virtualized computer system by a first allocation module and defined by at least a first range of MAC addresses, and the second MAC address pool provisioned for a second virtualized computer system by a second allocation module and defined by at least a second range of MAC addresses that does not overlap with the first range; and adjusting sizes of the first and second MAC address pools, wherein said adjusting includes programmatically contracting the first range by the first allocation module and programmatically expanding the second range by the second allocation module to include MAC addresses that were in the first range prior to contraction thereof. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
-
-
15. A virtualized computer system comprising:
-
a plurality of physical host computers in which one or more virtual machines are running; a first virtual machine management center including an allocation module for managing a first group of virtual machines and a first MAC address pool; a second virtual machine management center including an allocation module for managing a second group of virtual machines and a second MAC address pool; and a messaging system shared by the allocation modules of the first and second virtual machine management centers to notify each other of allocation of MAC addresses to a virtual machine included in one of the virtual machine management centers that belong to a MAC address pool of the other virtual machine management center. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 18)
-
Specification