Summary

Both the LinuxBridge and Open vSwitch networking plugins for Neutron provide unique solutions to the same problem of connecting virtual machine instances to the network. While Open vSwitch provides features not available with the monolithic LinuxBridge plugin, including the use of overlay networks, its configuration, administration, and troubleshooting methods are more complex. Open vSwitch relies on flow rules to determine how traffic in and out of the environment should be processed and requires both user-space utilities and kernel modules to perform such actions. The LinuxBridge plugin requires the 8021q and bridge kernel modules, and relies on the use of virtual VLAN interfaces on the host to provide VLAN tagging of traffic. The advent of the ML2 plugin pairs VXLAN overlay networking technology with the simplicity of Linux bridges. For most environments, I recommend the LinuxBridge approach unless integration with OpenFlow controllers or the use of a third-party solution or plugin...