c1ff66ac80
Until now, vHost ports in OVS have only been able to operate in 'server' mode whereby OVS creates and manages the vHost socket and essentially acts as the vHost 'server'. With this commit a new mode, 'client' mode, is available. In this mode, OVS acts as the vHost 'client' and connects to the socket created and managed by QEMU which now acts as the vHost 'server'. This mode allows for reconnect capability, which allows a vHost port to resume normal connectivity in event of switch reset. By default dpdkvhostuser ports still operate in 'server' mode. That is unless a valid 'vhost-server-path' is specified for a device like so: ovs-vsctl set Interface dpdkvhostuser0 options:vhost-server-path=/path/to/socket 'vhost-server-path' represents the full path of the vhost user socket that has been or will be created by QEMU. Once specified, the port stays in 'client' mode for the remainder of its lifetime. QEMU v2.7.0+ is required when using OVS in vHost client mode and QEMU in vHost server mode. Signed-off-by: Ciara Loftus <ciara.loftus@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Daniele Di Proietto <diproiettod@vmware.com>
Open vSwitch
Build Status:
What is Open vSwitch?
Open vSwitch is a multilayer software switch licensed under the open source Apache 2 license. Our goal is to implement a production quality switch platform that supports standard management interfaces and opens the forwarding functions to programmatic extension and control.
Open vSwitch is well suited to function as a virtual switch in VM environments. In addition to exposing standard control and visibility interfaces to the virtual networking layer, it was designed to support distribution across multiple physical servers. Open vSwitch supports multiple Linux-based virtualization technologies including Xen/XenServer, KVM, and VirtualBox.
The bulk of the code is written in platform-independent C and is easily ported to other environments. The current release of Open vSwitch supports the following features:
- Standard 802.1Q VLAN model with trunk and access ports
- NIC bonding with or without LACP on upstream switch
- NetFlow, sFlow(R), and mirroring for increased visibility
- QoS (Quality of Service) configuration, plus policing
- Geneve, GRE, GRE over IPSEC, VXLAN, and LISP tunneling
- 802.1ag connectivity fault management
- OpenFlow 1.0 plus numerous extensions
- Transactional configuration database with C and Python bindings
- High-performance forwarding using a Linux kernel module
The included Linux kernel module supports Linux 3.10 and up.
Open vSwitch can also operate, at a cost in performance, entirely in userspace, without assistance from a kernel module. This userspace implementation should be easier to port than the kernel-based switch. It is considered experimental.
What's here?
The main components of this distribution are:
- ovs-vswitchd, a daemon that implements the switch, along with a companion Linux kernel module for flow-based switching.
- ovsdb-server, a lightweight database server that ovs-vswitchd queries to obtain its configuration.
- ovs-dpctl, a tool for configuring the switch kernel module.
- Scripts and specs for building RPMs for Citrix XenServer and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The XenServer RPMs allow Open vSwitch to be installed on a Citrix XenServer host as a drop-in replacement for its switch, with additional functionality.
- ovs-vsctl, a utility for querying and updating the configuration of ovs-vswitchd.
- ovs-appctl, a utility that sends commands to running Open vSwitch daemons.
Open vSwitch also provides some tools:
- ovs-ofctl, a utility for querying and controlling OpenFlow switches and controllers.
- ovs-pki, a utility for creating and managing the public-key infrastructure for OpenFlow switches.
- ovs-testcontroller, a simple OpenFlow controller that may be useful for testing (though not for production).
- A patch to tcpdump that enables it to parse OpenFlow messages.
What other documentation is available?
To install Open vSwitch on a regular Linux or FreeBSD host, please read INSTALL.md. For specifics around installation on a specific platform, please see one of these files:
To use Open vSwitch...
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...with Docker on Linux, read INSTALL.Docker.md
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...with KVM on Linux, read INSTALL.md, read INSTALL.KVM.md
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...with Libvirt, read INSTALL.Libvirt.md.
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...without using a kernel module, read INSTALL.userspace.md.
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...with DPDK, read INSTALL.DPDK.md.
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...with SELinux, read INSTALL.SELinux.md.
For answers to common questions, read FAQ.md.
To learn how to set up SSL support for Open vSwitch, read INSTALL.SSL.md.
To learn about some advanced features of the Open vSwitch software switch, read the tutorial/Tutorial.md.
Each Open vSwitch userspace program is accompanied by a manpage. Many of the manpages are customized to your configuration as part of the build process, so we recommend building Open vSwitch before reading the manpages.