TECHNIQUE FOR MANAGING AN ALLOCATION OF A VLAN

摘要

The invention relates to techniques for allocation a VLAN for a deployment by at least one VM provided on a host in a network. The network may be a cloud computing network. The technique proposes a VLAN manager being adapted to allocate free physical VLAN identifier to the requested virtual VLAN identifier. The VLAN manager queries a VLAN mapping table for determining a free physical VLAN identifier. In case the physical VLAN identifier for the requested virtual VLAN identifier is in use a procedure for determining the at least one free physical VLAN is performed. Said determination procedure may be based on pre-defined zoning or it may apply a retagging after a free physical VLAN identifier has been calculated. In the next step the determined physical VLAN identifier is assigned to the requested VLAN. Finally the VLAN switch devices are instructed about the assignment between the virtual and the physical VLAN identifier in order to apply said assignment the data packets over transported over the requested VLAN. The applying may be realized by performing a retagging of the incoming and outgoing data packets between the physical and the virtual VLAN identifiers in a VLAN switch device.