Abstract: Examples described herein generally relate to hosting kernel isolated containers within a virtual machine. A server includes a physical processor and a physical computer memory storing executable code, the executable code providing a host virtual machine including a kernel and at least one kernel isolated container within the host virtual machine. The server includes a physical network interface controller, NIC, including a first physical NIC switch and a second physical NIC switch. The first physical NIC switch is configured to distribute incoming data packets to a first plurality of functions including a physical function and virtual functions. At least one of the virtual functions is assigned to the host virtual machine. The second physical NIC switch is configured to distribute the incoming data packets for the host virtual machine to a second plurality of virtual functions including a respective virtual function assigned to an individual kernel isolated container.