CENTRALIZED LOAD BALANCER WITH WEIGHTED HASH FUNCTION

A method, apparatus, and machine readable storage medium is disclosed for balancing loads among a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) from a central dispatcher, wherein the dispatcher receives data packets and maps the data packets to VMs selected from the plurality of VMs, using a weighted hash function, having an associated weighting for each VM and forwarding each packet to a VM accordingly, wherein a load balancer decrements a weighting for a VM, responsive to an indication of the load on the VM exceeding a first load threshold. Weightings can correspond to a number of bins associated with each VM. Weightings are adjusted in response to receiving invite and disinvite messages from the VMs, representing their respective loads.