Abstract: The disclosure provides an approach for load balancing packets within a data center. The approach leverages dynamically collected and up-to-date health information on each virtual computing instance located within the data center. In one embodiment, health monitoring modules, located within hypervisors of each host computer, collect health statistics on local virtual computing instances. Each health monitoring module shares its locally collected health statistics with every other health monitoring module. Each health monitoring module provides the shared health statistics, on all virtual computing instances within the data center, to a local load balancing module located within the hypervisor of each host computer. Each load balancing module uses health statistics of all virtual computing instances to load balance packets within the data center.

Abstract: The disclosure provides an approach for load balancing packets within a data center. The approach leverages dynamically collected and up-to-date health information on each virtual computing instance located within the data center. In one embodiment, health monitoring modules, located within hypervisors of each host computer, collect health statistics on local virtual computing instances. Each health monitoring module shares its locally collected health statistics with every other health monitoring module. Each health monitoring module provides the shared health statistics, on all virtual computing instances within the data center, to a local load balancing module located within the hypervisor of each host computer. Each load balancing module uses health statistics of all virtual computing instances to load balance packets within the data center.

Abstract: Mechanisms for operating a network element in an optical network are disclosed. A network element has a plurality of ports, each port including a respective receive input for receiving an optical signal from another network element and a respective transmit output for transmitting an optical signal to the other network element. Each port is configured with a respective fault detection mode of a plurality of fault detection modes.

Abstract: The mode of operation in which a port is configured to operate may be selected so that the manner in which the port will interpret a loss of signal on a receive fiber may be specified. In an immediate mode, the port will interpret a loss of signal on a receive fiber as an indication of a fault on the transmit fiber (or interfaces associated with the transmit fiber) and will immediately shut its transmit interface down. In a multiple cycle detection mode, the port will not immediately interpret a loss of signal on a receive fiber as an indication of a fault on the transmit fiber, but rather will begin monitoring the receive fiber to look for a specified loss of signal pattern on the receive fiber. In this mode the port will interpret a repetitive loss of signal on the receive fiber as an indication of a fault on the transmit fiber. By providing a mode selector, the manner in which the ports are configured to operate may be adjusted individually, as a group, or globally.