US Patent 11757782 Architectures for disaggregating SDN from the host

Techniques are disclosed for processing data packets and implementing policies in a software defined network (SDN) of a virtual computing environment. At least one SDN appliance is configured to disaggregate enforcement of policies of the SDN from hosts of the virtual computing environment. The servers are communicatively coupled to network interfaces of the SDN appliance. The servers host a plurality of virtual machines The SDN appliance comprises a plurality of smart network interface cards (sNICs) configured to implement functionality of the SDN appliance.