Virtual Route Solution Overview: OpenContrail, Vyatta, RouteFlow (1)

Virtual Route Solution Overview: OpenContrail, Vyatta, RouteFlow (1)

Preface -- about virtual Routing

Can SDN or OpenFlow open up a new era for the routing market? The open-source software switch represented by OpenvSwitch has promoted the development of the SDN industry for a while. However, there are few open-source software-based routers or routing solutions. To this end, this article introduces three systematic virtual routing solutions and briefly introduces one of them. The vro solution described in this article is OpenContrail, Vyatta, and RouteFlow.

OpenContrail

OpenContrail includes the OpenContrail controller and OpenContrail virtual route.

The OpenContrail controller is a logically centralized but physically distributed SDN controller that provides management, control, and analysis functions for virtual networks.

OpenContrail vRouter is a distributed routing service running on the hypervisor of the virtual server, the network is expanded from the physical router and switch of a data center network to an overlay network based on the communication between Vm instances.

In OpenContrail, virtual routers work closely with hypervisor to implement Overlay networks by using MPLS over GRE, UDP, or VXLAN. The cross-Data Center Virtualization of penContrail is implemented by using MPLS L3 VPN or EVPN, Which is mature and reliable. OpenContrail vro is similar in concept to the current vSwitch, but it provides routing and higher-level services (replacing vSwitch with vRouter ).

OpenContrail architecture:

 

You can see the distributed controllers and vRouter. OpenContrail provides a complete east-west north-south interface. REST interfaces provided by North interfaces can be used by suppliers or integrated into systems such as OpenStack (ONOS also provides northbound interfaces with similar functions ); the southbound interface is used for communication in a virtual or physical network environment. The eastbound interface can communicate with other controllers. Multiple protocols are used in OpenContrail, such as BGP, XMPP, and Netconf. Their usage is shown in the figure.

In fact, the controller contains three components that can be deployed on different physical nodes: configuration nodes, control nodes, and analysis nodes.

Configuration node: as an intermediary, it provides Conversion Between Upper-layer applications and lower-layer foundations, that is, the upper-layer applications are implemented using the underlying foundations.

Control Node: synchronizes network information to ensure information consistency in the environment.

Analysis node: The function is similar to statistical analysis. The collected system data is analyzed and displayed. About the vro function:

 

A virtual router is a user space process that runs in Linux and is a local lightweight control plane. Each vro connects to at least two control nodes to provide route redundancy.

The virtual router accepts the configuration status from the Control Node Based on XMPP, and implements the configuration status. It also takes into account the reporting of events and logs.

About XMPP:

XMPP is based on XML and is formerly called Jabber. OpenContrail uses XMPP as a common information bus between a computing node and a control node.

RouteFlow:

RouteFlow is a virtual IP address routing Service developed by CPQD in Brazil. Most of the current network devices are proprietary software running on proprietary hardware, which is expensive and difficult to program. To a certain extent, innovation is limited. The open engine of RouteFlow is based on open-source routing tools, combined with open APIs, to achieve a good performance and customizable open routing solution on commercial hardware.

Comparison with traditional routing architecture:

Existing solutions:

Routeflow solution:

As you can see, the control logic lies in the controller, which separates the data plane from the control plane. In this way, the hardware architecture can be further simplified.