According to one embodiment, a server includes an accelerated network interface card (NIC), the accelerated NIC including a plurality of network ports including multiple Peripheral Component Interconnect express (PCIe) ports, an Overlay Network Offload System (ONOS), the ONOS including logic adapted for providing overlay functionality to network traffic received by the accelerated NIC, a first receiving/transmitting (RX/TX) packet buffer adapted for caching network traffic sent to or received from a network, a second RX/TX packet buffer adapted for caching the network traffic received from or sent to the server, and an Ethernet controller adapted for interfacing with the network. The server also includes a hypervisor coupled to one or more virtual machines (VMs) and a NIC driver adapted for interfacing with and supporting the accelerated NIC, wherein the NIC driver includes logic adapted for managing operations of the accelerated NIC.