OVN (Open Virtual Network) is a system to support

virtual network In computing, network virtualization is the process of combining hardware and software network resources and network functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, a virtual network. Network virtualization involves platform v ...

abstraction. OVN complements the existing capabilities of

Open vSwitch Open vSwitch (OVS) is an open-source implementation of a distributed virtual multilayer switch. The main purpose of Open vSwitch is to provide a switching stack for hardware virtualization environments, while supporting multiple protocols and ...

to add native support for virtual network abstractions, such as virtual L2 and L3 overlays and security groups.

Overview

OVN is a network virtualization platform that separates the physical network topology from the logical one. Users are able to connect virtual and physical interfaces with logical switches and routers, regardless of the underlying physical topology. Users are also able to define security policies and load-balancing to these logical instances. OVN uses Open vSwitch for its switching fabric and uses tunnels to provide the logical/physical separation. Open source bindings for OVN are available for a number of platforms, such as

OpenStack OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software pla ...

and

Kubernetes Kubernetes (), also known as K8s is an open-source software, open-source OS-level virtualization, container orchestration (computing), orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Googl ...

. OVN is the

software-defined networking Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to network management that uses abstraction to enable dynamic and programmatically efficient network configuration to create grouping and segmentation while improving network performance and monit ...

(SDN) platform used in a number of

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

products, including Red Hat Virtualization, OpenStack, and OpenShift. OVN is written in platform-independent

C language C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities o ...

, which provides easy portability to various environments. The source code is licensed under the

Apache License The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software ...

2.0.

Features

As of May 2018, features provided by OVN include the following: * Logical switches * Flexible L2/L3/L4 security policies * Distributed logical

IPv4 Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the first version of the Internet Protocol (IP) as a standalone specification. It is one of the core protocols of standards-based internetworking methods in the Internet and other packet-switched networks. ...

and

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communication protocol, communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic ...

routers * Native support for

network address translation Network address translation (NAT) is a method of mapping an IP address space into another by modifying network address information in the IP header of packets while they are in transit across a traffic Router (computing), routing device. The te ...

(NAT), load-balancing, and

DHCP The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a clie ...

* L2 and L3 gateways

References

{{reflist Computing platforms