Abstract: A method is disclosed for managing network communication in a virtual machine hosting computer system with nested child partitions. The method involves loading a network driver in a level-one child partition and creating a virtual switch within the level-one child partition. The virtual switch establishes a synthetic data path between a synthetic network adapter offered by a root partition and a network driver in a level-two child partition. A network interface controller (NIC) switch capability is exposed to the virtual switch, and a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) virtual function offered by the root partition is passed from the level-one child partition to the level-two child partition, enabling the level-two child partition to take advantage of the PCIe virtual function.

Abstract: A packet monitoring application instantiated on a server hosting a virtualized network stack is utilized to track data packet propagations and drops at each component within the network stack to reduce the amount of time to identify a root cause for latency issues. The packet monitoring application can be selectively enabled or disabled by an administrator. Components within the virtualized network stack report packet drops and successful packet propagations to the packet monitoring application, which can filter the packets based on input parameters. Thus, a user can select at what level of granularity to filter packets within the virtualized network stack while being able to assess each packet's traversal through each component within the network stack. The packet monitoring application can also perform post-processing of on the filtered data packets to determine latency among components or sections of the virtualized network stack.

Abstract: A packet monitoring application instantiated on a server hosting a virtualized network stack is utilized to track data packet propagations and drops at each component within the network stack to reduce the amount of time to identify a root cause for latency issues. The packet monitoring application can be selectively enabled or disabled by an administrator. Components within the virtualized network stack report packet drops and successful packet propagations to the packet monitoring application, which can filter the packets based on input parameters. Thus, a user can select at what level of granularity to filter packets within the virtualized network stack while being able to assess each packet's traversal through each component within the network stack. The packet monitoring application can also perform post-processing of on the filtered data packets to determine latency among components or sections of the virtualized network stack.