The Open vSwitch mechanism driver supports a range of traditional and overlay networking technologies, and has support for the following types of drivers:
- Local
- Flat
- VLAN
- VXLAN
- GRE
Within OpenStack Networking, Open vSwitch operates as a software switch that uses virtual network bridges and flow rules to forward packets between hosts. Although it is capable of supporting many technologies and protocols, only a subset of Open vSwitch features are leveraged by OpenStack Networking.
The following are three main components of Open vSwitch:
- Kernel module: The openvswitch kernel module is the equivalent of ASICs on a hardware switch. It is the data plane of the switch where all packet processing takes place.
- vSwitch daemon: The ovs-vswitchd daemon is a Linux process that runs in user space on every physical host and dictates how the kernel module will...