By definition, Open vSwitch is open-source virtual switch software designed for virtual servers. It is a production quality, multilayer virtual switch licensed under the open source Apache 2.0 license.
Open vSwitch is designed to be compatible with modern switching chipsets so that it can be ported to high fan-out switches, thus providing the same flexibility of control to physical infrastructure as virtual ones.
Open vSwitch differs from traditional approaches, in that it exports an interface for fine-grained control of the forwarding, which can be used to support QoS, tunneling, and filtering rules.
In this short post, we will see what might somebody do with a thing like Open vSwitch? Can it be enablement of automated network infrastructure for virtualized environments? The answer is a yes.
To list down, here’s a quick recap of some of the features and tools of Open vSwitch that are worth a mention:
- Fully functional Layer 2 switch
- NetFlow, sFlow, SPAN, and RSPAN support
- 802.1Q VLANs with trunking
- QoS
- Port aggregation
- GRE tunneling
- Compatibility with the Linux bridge code (brctl)
- Kernel and user-space switch implementation
Let’s take a note of few interesting aspects that clearly depict why we can’t miss on a thing like Open vSwitch:
- Since Open vSwitch also supports programmatic control of address remapping (L2 and L3 a la OpenFlow), and programmatic control of tunnels as well as multiple tunnel types (e.g. GRE, IPsec, and CAPWAP), the entire gamut of tools comes in handy for various network virtualization functions such as supporting mobility or an L2 service model across subnets
- Open vSwitch is able to run on any Linux-based virtualization platform with a kernel of 2.6.18 or later. These platforms are VirtualBox, KVM, Xen, XenServer and the Xen Cloud Platform
- It’s fast. Open vSwitch uses flow-caching, so even under complex configurations the common case should be blazingly fast.
At Calsoft, in an effort towards contributing to SDN, our experts developed and tested Open vSwitch component. Some of the work that Calsoft did for one of the elite customers underpins:
Open vSwitch Solution-
Through Open vSwitch Solution, the customer could bridge network traffic gap between VMs residing in different hosts. The solution enabled mobility of VM’s between different hosts along with their network state.
- Quantum integrated with vSwitch using plugin
- Enhancement in utilities in Open vSwitch source
- Enhancement in bug tool in Open vSwitch
- Bug fixes in Open vSwitch
- Wireshark plugin implementation for proprietary tunnel protocol
- Python module to spin up and manage hypervisor on cloud using Open stack API
- Design of validation suite for integration verification of Open vSwitch and Hypervisor
- Regression testing of OVS features
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