SCALABLE AND SEGREGATED NETWORK VIRTUALIZATION

One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch 700 comprising a storage device 750 to store a port profile in association with a datacenter domain. The datacenter domain indicates a set of ports associated with a datacenter. The port profile includes configuration information associated with one or more media access control (MAC) addresses. The switch further comprises a port profile module 740 to identify the port profile in response to identifying that a source MAC address of a packet is associated with the datacenter domain, wherein the source MAC address is in the one or more MAC addresses. The port profile module 740 applies the port profile to an ingress port of the packet. A port profile can contain the entire configuration needed for a virtual machine to gain access to a LAN or WAN, which can include: Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) configuration, VLAN configuration, QoS related configuration, and security related configuration, such as access control lists (ACLs). In one embodiment, a port profile can be capable of operating as a self contained configuration container. In other words, if a port profile is applied to a new switch without any additional configuration, the port profile should be sufficient to set the switch's global and local (interface level) configuration and allow the switch to start carrying traffic.In an example, a switch segregates port profiles for a respective datacenter domain.