Architecture of OVN

The OVN is an implementation based on SDN architecture. As the SDN architecture evolved, it became apparent that the centralized controller could be a bottleneck when deployed in large networks with hundreds of switches. The architecture of OVN removes this drawback by using multiple OVS databases and controllers to provide a programmable virtual networking solution:

In this section, we will learn about the OVN components and their integration with OpenStack.

Components of OVN

The core of the OVN solution is the OpenVSwitch that implements programmable flow rules using OpenFlow. Unlike other SDN solutions that are based on a centralized controller and the virtual switches connecting to it, the OVN project uses multiple levels of controllers. These controllers manage abstractions that are stored in different ovsdb databases.

The OVN project is composed of the following components:

• Northbound database: The northbound database is an instance of ovsdb used by OVN to store high...