In one embodiment, a method includes sending a switch discovery signal to one or more of a plurality of switches, receiving a reply to the switch discovery signal from the one or more of the plurality of switches, each reply comprising a switch identifier (ID) and a quantity of ports, receiving configuration information identifying at least one virtual stack to create, determining a virtual topology for the at least one virtual stack based on the configuration information, creating a first virtual stack of the at least one virtual stack by assigning at least one switch port of a source switch to the first virtual stack of the at least one virtual stack in accordance with the configuration information, and storing the virtual topology in a mapping table local to a computer comprising the first computer processor.