Open vSwitch as Virtual Switch for VM Environments

Sep 09, 2009

The Open vSwitch open source project has announced development of a sofware switch for virtual environments.

The goal of the Open vSwitch project is development of a production-ready nework switch for virtual environments that is extensible and supports standard management interfaces such as NetFlow, RSPAN, ERSPAN and Cisco IOS-like CLIs. A further requirement is for the software to be distributable across different physical servers, similar to proprietary products such as VMWare's vswitch and Cisco's Nexus 1000v.

A first Open vSwitch version is already available as source code under Apache 2 licensing. Developers report that "the bulk of the code is written in platform-independent C and is easily ported to other environments." Already supported are the virtualization technologies Xen/XenServer, KVM and VirtualBox.

The project website lists a series of currently supported features. Among them, VLAN tagging per 802.1q, VM policing, NIC bonding, kernel-based forwarding and support of the OpenFlow standard. The project page also lists the features under development.

The Virtualization.info portal puts Citrix as the motivating force behind the project. The source code meanwhile has references to the Palo Alto CA network company Nicira.

Related content

  • Windows in OpenStack

    An Italian company is making sure Microsoft doesn't sleep through the hype concerning OpenStack. Learn about the recent work on integrating OpenStack with Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor.

    more »
  • SDN Up Close

    Globalization, rapidly increasing numbers of devices, virtualization, the cloud, and "bring your own device" make classically organized IP networks difficult to plan and manage. Instead of quarreling, some admins address these problems with a radically new approach: Software-defined networking.

    more »
  • Mininet

    Mininet lets you test new controller features for your software-defined network in a sandbox before releasing them onto your production network.

    more »
  • Linux 3.3 Released

    Changes in the new Linux 3.3 release include the merge of kernel code from the Android project.

    more »
  • openSUSE Rolls Out 42.2 Leap

    New release targets Linux professionals.

    more »
comments powered by Disqus

Issue 245/2021

Buy this issue as a PDF

Digital Issue: Price $12.99
(incl. VAT)

News

Tag Cloud

Administration Community Desktop Events Hardware Linux Linux Pro Magazine Mobile Programming Software Ubuntu Web Development Windows free software open source