Incorporating Bare Metal Server into VXLAN-Based Virtual Private Cloud

With the rapid development and widespread adoption of cloud computing, an increasing number of enterprises and personal businesses are migrating from local data centers to the cloud, including public, private, and hybrid clouds. However, different types of workloads have varying demands on computing resources. Some workloads may require the exclusive use of a bare metal server and cannot be directly deployed on virtual machines. Yet, these workloads often need to interact with other services within the same VPC (Virtual Private Cloud). This necessitates that bare metal servers must be integrated into the same management framework and virtual network as the virtual machines within a VXLAN (Virtual Extensible Local Area Network)-based VPC network. This paper proposes a solution for incorporating bare metal servers into a VXLAN-based VPC. The solution involves deploying a Layer 2 bridging connector on general virtualization compute nodes, which connects the VLAN of the bare metal servers with the VXLAN network of the virtual machines, thus enabling network connectivity between them. Layer 3 routing functions are handled by leveraging the virtual router of the VXLAN network, facilitating cross-subnet traffic forwarding and north-south traffic forwarding and network address translation via the virtual router. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this solution, showing good scalability and suitability for large-scale deployment and application in both public and private clouds.