Open SDN Switch OS Rob Sherwood Big Switch

Open SDN Switch OS Rob Sherwood Big Switch Networks Ethernet Technology Summit 2014 Santa Clara, CA USA April-May 2014 1

Rob Sherwood • CTO, Software architect at Big Switch Networks • ONF: former chair of Arch. WG and vice-chair of Testing. WG • Working in Open. Flow/SDN since 2008 • Wrote the Flow. Visor: • http: //flowvisor. org Santa Clara, CA USA April-May 2014 2

Outline • Motivation: Open Networking • SDN Basics • Switch Software • Open Network Linux • OF-DPA • Conclusions and Community

SDN Architectural Evolution BEFORE NOW Automation Tool APIs North-bound APIs SDN App SDN Controller CP/DP Separation Open. Flow & Extensions Open. Flow (Thick) Net. OS OF (Thin) SDN OS Network HW • Too many moving parts (multiple SDN SW vendors) • OF agent SW from HW vendor! • Limited access to switch ASIC access Open. Flow is just API Network HW • • SDN SW solution from single vendor Exactly like the hypervisor/server model Full access to switch ASIC Accelerate HW/SW disaggregation

SDN Architectural Evolution Cloud Fabric Automation Tool Big Tap Big Switch Network’s Commercial Products This talk: Open Source Switch OS © 2014 BIG SWITCH NETWORKS, INC. WWW. BIGSWITCH. COM PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL SDN App SDN Controller (Thin) SDN OS Network HW 5

Isn’t Networking already open? All Hardware Specs Public X 86 Servers Open Binary SDK for Packet Forwarding NPU, FPGA, So. C Closed OS, Open Control Plane APIs DC – 1 U To. Rs, Spines Closed OS, Open APIs for Policy, Stats Multi-chassis Routers 10 Gb/s 100 Gb/s 1 Tb/s Aggregate Throughput 10 Tb/s

Isn’t Networking already open? All Hardware Specs Public X 86 Servers Open Binary SDK for Packet Forwarding NPU, FPGA, So. C Closed OS, Open Control Plane APIs This talk DC – 1 U To. Rs, Spines Closed OS, Open APIs for Policy, Stats Multi-chassis Routers 10 Gb/s 100 Gb/s 1 Tb/s Aggregate Throughput 10 Tb/s

Goal: One Big Switch Controller 1 Spine Leaf Controller 2 Line Card 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 Leaf Line Card Chassis-based Fabric 6 Leaf 3 Leaf Line Card 2 Spine Line Card 1 Spine Supervisor 2 Fabric Backplane Supervisor 1 These designs are fundamentally the same! Leaf-Spine Fabric

Forwarding Abstraction: Flow Table Flow. Table Priority Match Action List 500 IP. proto=6 TCP. dst=22 TTL--, Fwd: port 3 200 IP. dst= 128. 8/16 * Queue: 4 100 DROP • “Assembly Language of Networking” • Too low-level for most operators • Active work in the Open Networking Foundation to bring Open. Flow to feature parity with “closed flow”

Switch Scaling: Understanding Tables § § Classical Open. Flow versus Modern Proactive and Multi-table Open. Flow Processing Pipeline VLAN Table L 2 Table: L 3 Table: 100 K+ Entries Early Open. Flow implementations only used the most flexible table. • Didn’t scale well • Scale forced reactive population • Reactive caused controller load and addition scale problems Our Modern Open. Flow implementation leverages all tables • Scales like traditional • Allows proactive population • Proactive reduces controller load and allows for headless control ACL Table: ~2 k Entries Open. Flow does NOT imply Flow-based Networking Egress Table 10

OUtline • Motivation: Open Networking • SDN Basics • Switch Software • Open Network Linux • OF-DPA • Conclusions and Community

Switch Light Architecture Big Network Controllers Legend Open Network Linux Open. Flow Agent CLI Switch Light OS Indigo Loxi BSN Open ZTN Loader BSN Closed 3 rd Party Closed Source SSH Fan Control NTP Syslog SNMP Lib. C on Debian Wheezy Base Distribution ONL Linux Kernel I 2 C GPIO Device Trees Indigo/ASIC Driver ASIC SDK ASIC Switch Light is our Indigo Open. Flow Agent running on Open Network Linux on x 86 or ASIC-based hardware.

Open Network Linux A Linux distribution for bare metal switches • Open-sourced commercial code, build scripts, drivers from Switch Light • Part of Open Compute Project (OCP) • Project goals: • Improve perception/de-risk bare metal • “Crowd source” larger Switch Light HCL • Released mid-January: Initial results • Strong community response from ODMs, OCP • Accton self-supporting three new boxes, more ODMs interested • Other vendors investigating ONL for their own purposes • Info: http: //opennetlinux. org – under construction

ONL – Supported Hardware • ONL Support is Pre-cursor to Switch Light Support • Working on OCP box from Interface Masters with x 86 support

Open. Flow Datapath Abtraction: OF-DPA Indigo open driver OF-DPA SDK Chip OF-DPA API closed

Conclusion and Community • Many Open Source projects • Take the pieces or the whole: ONL • Didn’t have time: Indigo and Loxi • All of these projects are used by BSN • Quality, tested code • “Productized” modern Open. Flow • Join at: opennetlinux. org/community • Comments and feedback welcome