Chapter 1. Open Virtual Network (OVN)

Open Virtual Network (OVN) is an Open vSwitch-based software-defined networking (SDN) solution for supplying network services to instances. OVN provides platform-neutral support for the full OpenStack Networking API. With OVN, you can programatically connect groups of guest instances into private L2 and L3 networks. OVN uses a standard approach to virtual networking that is capable of extending to other Red Hat platforms and solutions.

This release of the Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) does not provide a supported migration from the ML2/OVS mechanism driver to the ML2/OVN mechanism driver. This RHOSP release does not support the OpenStack community migration strategy. Migration support is planned for a future RHOSP release.

This section describes the steps required to deploy OVN using director.

1.1. List of components in the RHOSP OVN architecture

The RHOSP OVN architecture replaces the OVS Modular Layer 2 (ML2) mechanism driver with the OVN ML2 mechanism driver to support the Networking API. OVN provides networking services for the Red Hat OpenStack platform.

The OVN architecture consists of the following components and services:

ML2 plugin with OVN mechanism driver

The ML2 plug-in translates the OpenStack-specific networking configuration into the platform-neutral OVN logical networking configuration. It typically runs on the Controller node.

OVN Northbound (NB) database (ovn-nb)

This database stores the logical OVN networking configuration from the OVN ML2 plugin. It typically runs on the Controller node and listens on TCP port 6641.

OVN Northbound service (ovn-northd)

This service converts the logical networking configuration from the OVN NB database to the logical data path flows and populates these on the OVN Southbound database. It typically runs on the Controller node.

OVN Southbound (SB) database (ovn-sb)

This database stores the converted logical data path flows. It typically runs on the Controller node and listens on TCP port 6642.

OVN controller (ovn-controller)

This controller connects to the OVN SB database and acts as the open vSwitch controller to control and monitor network traffic. It runs on all Compute and gateway nodes where OS::Tripleo::Services::OVNController is defined.

OVN metadata agent (ovn-metadata-agent)

This agent creates the haproxy instances for managing the OVS interfaces, network namespaces and HAProxy processes used to proxy metadata API requests. The agent runs on all Compute and gateway nodes where OS::TripleO::Services::OVNMetadataAgent is defined.

OVS database server (OVSDB)

Hosts the OVN Northbound and Southbound databases. Also interacts with ovs-vswitchd to host the OVS database conf.db.

Note

The schema file for the NB database is located in /usr/share/ovn/ovn-nb.ovsschema, and the SB database schema file is in /usr/share/ovn/ovn-sb.ovsschema.