The ODL-OVS demo shown at LCU14 showcases the OpenDataPlane project together with OpenDayLight SDN Controller using Open vSwitch to bridge the two projects.
OpenDataPlane is a framework for developing cross-platform user space dataplane applications, like it is the case with Open vSwitch. For this we have written a “netdev provider” based on ODP to make OVS capable to work on a variety of platforms through the abstractions provided by the ODP API. The OpenDaylight Controller’s role is to manage virtual OVS switches/bridges running on top of ODP, both through a GUI web interface as well as through a series of scripts that take advantage of the REST northbound API of the OpenDaylight Controller. The video also shows how to control OVS switches through the ovs-ofctl command line tool of OVS, that is equivalent to using an externally connected controller implementing the OpenFlow specification (like the OpenDaylight Controller).
Right now the ODP netdev layer for OVS runs on linux-generic using basic socket transport, and it is scheduled to be running on linux-dpdk and linux-keystone2 ODP platforms. For the purpose of the demo the ODP netdev layer doesn’t take advantage of ODP’s packet scheduler, it only sends and receives packets in burst mode. For that it might be necessary to implement a dpif provider, which is one layer upper in the design of Open vSwitch.
