Case study

Integration of Tungsten Fabric SDN, OVS, and SR-IOV compute nodes with an ML2 OpenStack mechanism

Cloud
SDN & NFV
Software Development
DevOps

Business background

Client type

Client type

Networking software provider offering solutions including SDN, WAN controllers, SD-WAN/LAN, private cloud and DC provider—with OpenStack playing a key role
Business goal

Business goal

To expand the Tungsten Fabric (TF, previously OpenContrail) enterprise customer base by enabling current OpenStack users to integrate and later live migrate their OVS- and SR-IOV-based compute nodes to Tungsten Fabric

Our approach

  • Provide a team of software and network engineers with experience in developing Tungsten Fabric
  • Prepare a Proof of Concept (PoC), to be presented as a demo at the 2019 Open Infrastructure Summit in Shanghai
  • Ensure smooth communication between client and team to deliver this R&D project successfully
  • Deliver CI changes and a complete set of automated tests
  • Support the client with a live PoC demo at the Open Infrastructure Summit
  • Open-source the solution

Business benefits

  • New business opportunities: opened up thanks to the live PoC presentation during the conference.
  • Fast time-to-market: CodiLime quickly formed an efficient and experienced team to start the project immediately and deliver the PoC on time.
  • Optimized cost: each team member had a wide range of skills (hardware, networking, software and DevOps) so fewer people were engaged and costs were optimized.
  • Ensured quality: the solution was released to the open-source community for scrutiny.
  • Reduced risks: engineers experienced in TF were able to deliver the PoC in short iterations, with the client then able to adjust the scope and requirements.

Technical highlights

  • The solution was based on the ML2 MechanismDriver framework from OpenStack, enabling the use of numerous ML2-based SDN drivers simultaneously.
  • This made it possible to manage and orchestrate workloads from one central point and reuse security policies.
  • OVS-, SR-IOV-, and vRouter-based workloads ran simultaneously.
  • Ran OVS and SR-IOV workloads while Tungsten Fabric was managing the underlying fabric.
  • Live migration of OVS-based computes to vRouter-based computes was possible.

Technology stack

tungsten_fabric_logo
openstack_logo
ovs
ml2_logo
sr-iov
l3vpn
evpn
vxlan

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