Apparatus and method for pooling network interface cards in a cloud network

Abstract

A network interface component is disclosed, comprising a CPU and a pool of physical NICs that provide network interface resources for virtual NICs. The network interface component's OS creates virtual NICs to facilitate data flow between the network interface component and virtual machines running on servers coupled to it. The OS dynamically creates and manages the virtual NICs necessary to handle traffic flow between the network interface component and virtual machines running on servers coupled to it. The OS instructs which physical NICs should be used (shared) among which virtual NICs. Any physical NIC from the pool can be shared by multiple virtual NICs and can be reallocated to another virtual NIC depending on traffic flow through the cloud computing network.

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