Packet deduplication for network packet monitoring in virtual processing environments

Systems and methods are disclosed for packet deduplication for network packet monitoring in virtual processing environments. Tap agents are installed and run with respect to network applications operating with virtual processing environments. These tap agents capture packet traffic associated within these network applications, and deduplication rules are applied so that duplicate packet capture is avoided at the tap agents themselves. In particular, deduplication rules are applied to tap agents where two network applications for which packets are being captured are talking to each other so that one of the tap agents is set to the designated agent for packet capture. Without this designation, packets captured at by the two associated packet agents would represent the same packet flow from both ends thereby leading to duplicate packet capture.