Patent attributes
A Hypervisor hosted on a computer device includes a Fiber Channel (FC) port to communicate with an FC switch in an FC switched fabric. The FC port has a port identifier assigned by the switch device. The Hypervisor solicits from the switch FC priority values available to be allocated as respective local identifiers of virtual machines (VMs). The Hypervisor instantiates a VM with a global VM identifier, and allocates one of the solicited priority values to the instantiated VM such that the allocated priority value and the port identifier together represent a fabric VM identifier. After the allocating, the Hypervisor sends to the FC switch an update frame to indicate the instantiated VM, the global VM identifier, and the fabric VM identifier. During an FC session, the Hypervisor exchanges FC frames with an FC destination port connected to the switched fabric. Each session frame indicates the fabric VM identifier.