Replication with dedicated metal deployment in a cloud

1. A method comprising:

receiving from a host node comprising a tenant multicast application with a single tenant deployment, an encapsulated multicast packet over unicast at a virtual replicator, the encapsulated multicast packet comprising receiver information for the virtual replicator, said receiver information comprising multicast membership information inserted into the packet by the host node for use in replicating and transmitting the packet to a plurality of receiving nodes;

replicating the encapsulated multicast packet at the virtual replicator; and

transmitting the encapsulated multicast packet over unicast to said plurality of receiving nodes based on said receiver information, said plurality of receiving nodes comprising the tenant multicast application;

wherein the virtual replicator maintains topology state without multicast membership information and operates in a cloud without multicast capability and wherein the tenant multicast application operates in a single virtual machine or container at the host node in the single tenant deployment.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the host node and the receiving nodes each comprise a packet processing instance running in the same virtual machine as the tenant multicast application.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein said receiver information comprises a bit array and wherein bit positions within said bit array specify the receiving nodes.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein said receiver information comprises a bit indexed explicit replication header and the virtual replicator comprises a bit indexed explicit replication forwarding information base for use in identifying the receiving nodes.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising splitting a replication load across one or more of the receiving nodes for multi-stage replication.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the virtual replicator operates in the cloud with at least one other virtual replicator, and wherein replication is load balanced across the virtual replicators.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the host node and the receiving nodes each comprise a packet processing instance running in the same container as the tenant multicast application.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the receiver information is located in a header generated at the host node based on information received from membership signaling protocol packets.

9. An apparatus comprising:

a tenant multicast application configured to run in a single virtual machine or container in a single tenant deployment at the apparatus;

a packet processing instance associated with the tenant multicast application and configured to run in the single virtual machine or container;

a processor for inserting receiver information into a multicast packet and transmitting the multicast packet over unicast to a virtual replicator configured to replicate the multicast packet and transmit replicated packets over unicast to a plurality of receiving nodes based on said receiver information said receiver information comprising multicast membership information for use in replicating and transmitting the packet to a plurality of receiving nodes; and

memory for storing said receiver information;

wherein the apparatus is configured for said single tenant deployment in a cloud without multicast capability and wherein the virtual replicator maintains topology state without multicast membership information and operates in a cloud without multicast capability.

10. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the packet processing instance comprises a vector packet processing instance.

11. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the receiving nodes each comprise the packet processing instance and the tenant multicast application.

12. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein said receiver information comprises a bit array and wherein bit positions within said bit array specify the receiving nodes.

13. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the replicated packets are transmitted using stateless multicast.

14. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein said receiver information is received at the apparatus from a controller.

15. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the processor is further operable to load balance replication between the virtual replicator and at least one other virtual replicator based on network data collected at a controller.

16. A system comprising:

a plurality of local packet processing instances running on a plurality of hosts, each of the hosts comprising a single tenant in a dedicated metal deployment, each of the local packet processing instances associated with a tenant multicast application and configured to encapsulate a multicast packet with receiver information and transmit the multicast packet to a dedicated virtual replicator; and

the dedicated virtual replicator for replicating the multicast packet received from one of the hosts and transmitting replicated multicast packets to a portion of said plurality of said hosts based on said receiver information, the dedicated virtual replicator configured to maintain topology state without multicast membership information;

wherein the multicast packets are transmitted over unicast in a cloud without multicast capability and wherein said receiver information comprises multicast membership information inserted into the packet by one of the host nodes for use by the dedicated virtual replicator in replicating and transmitting the packet to a plurality of receiving nodes.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein at least one of said plurality of hosts is configured to replicate one of the received replicated multicast packets and transmits the packet to another of said hosts for multi-stage replication.

18. The system of claim 16 wherein said local packet processing instances and said dedicated virtual replicators form an overlay network and said cloud comprises an underlay network, and wherein migration of a virtual machine associated with the packet processing instance and the tenant multicast application to another of the hosts changes only the underlay network.

19. The system of claim 16 wherein said receiver information comprises a bit array and wherein bit positions in said bit array specify the receiving nodes.

20. The system of claim 16 wherein each of the hosts is configured upon receiving a join message to signal an interest in a receiver joining a multicast group to the other hosts without notifying the dedicated virtual replicator.