episode-27.xml

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  <title>DragonFlow</title>
  <guests>Omer Anson from Huawei</guests>
  <description>
    <p>
      Omer Anson is a software developer at Huawei.  I caught up with him at
      OpenStack Barcelona back in October to talk about the <a
      href="https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Dragonflow">Dragonflow</a> project,
      which is a distributed SDN controller for OpenStack Neutron that supports
      logical switching and routing and more advanced features.
    </p>

    <p>
      According to Omer, Dragonflow distinguishes itself from other Neutron
      drivers by aiming at scale.  It intends to scale to thousands or even
      tens of thousands of compute nodes (hypervisors).  It also focuses on
      scale testing, testing in simulation with 4,000 nodes with very good
      results, showing a slowdown of only about 5% between 30 nodes and 4,000
      nodes for control plane operations such as creating subnets or ports.
    </p>

    <p>
      Dragonflow features include fully distributed DHCP and ARP responders.
      The latter feature reduces the amount of broadcast traffic within a
      cloud.  Dragonflow can integrate physical devices and even remote clouds
      into a logical network through its ``remote device'' functionality.
    </p>

    <p>
      The Dragonflow implementation currently builds on top of OpenFlow with
      Nicira extensions (as implemented by Open vSwitch).  The developers are
      also considering adding support for BPF or P4 datapaths.
    </p>

    <p>
      The Dragonflow design emphasizes pluggability:
    </p>

    <blockquote>
      My vision is—our vision is—that everything—every Neutron API that
      exists—will be written as a Dragonflow application.  Currently,
      Dragonflow itself does very little to nothing with creating flows and
      instructing the policy of how packets move.  Everything is done through
      applications.  We have an L2 application which detects the MAC addresses
      and knows how to direct them to the correct ports, we have an L3
      application... that knows to detect when packets are supposed to reach
      the router and have the layer-2 addresses replaced...
    </blockquote>

    <p>
      DragonFlow supports, for example, running on top of any of several
      database systems.  The diversity among those databases is vast, which
      gives users great freedom to choose one that is well suited for their own
      needs.
    </p>

    <p>
      Dragonflow has multiple implementations of L3.  One of these populates
      flows proactively into Open vSwitch, that is, it adds flows without
      waiting for packets to arrive at the controller.  The other uses some
      proactive population along with reactive population, that is, adding
      flows in response to packet arrival.  Omer explains the rationale for the
      two implementations and how they work.
    </p>

    <p>
      A new feature of Dragonflow is that it is now implemented as an ``ML2
      mechanism driver'' rather than a Neutron core plugin.  This allows it to
      better coexist with other Neutron drivers within a single deployment.
    </p>

    <p>
      Omer mentions some upcoming development work, such as a better, more
      user-oriented deployment mechanism and integration with additional
      projects such as <a href="https://www.ansible.com/">Ansible</a>, the
      OpenStack <a href="https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Kolla">Kolla</a>
      project, OpenStack <a
      href="https://docs.openstack.org/developer/puppet-openstack-guide/">Puppet</a>,
      and more.  Service function chaining support is also in the works.
    </p>

    <p>
      The Dragonflow project is seeking new contributors.  You can find the
      developers in the #openstack-dragonflow channel in the <a
      href="http://freenode.net/">Freenode</a> IRC network.  Omer's nick
      on Freenode is "oanson".
    </p>

    <p class="attribution">
      OVS Orbit is produced by <a href="mailto:blp@ovn.org">Ben Pfaff</a>.  The
      intro music in this episode is <a
      href="http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/AlexBeroza/43098">Drive</a>,
      featuring cdk and DarrylJ, copyright 2013, 2016 by Alex.  The bumper
      music is <a href="http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/speck/42100">Yeah Ant</a>
      featuring Wired Ant and Javolenus, copyright 2013 by Speck.  The outro
      music is <a href="http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Kirkoid/43005">Space
      Bazooka</a> featuring Doxen Zsigmond, copyright 2013 by Kirkoid.  All
      content is licensed under a Creative Commons <a
      href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Attribution 3.0
      Unported (CC BY 3.0)</a> license.
    </p>
  </description>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Mar 2017 02:28:07 GMT</pubDate>
</item>