Learning OpenDaylight

Reza Toghraee

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781782174370
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Virtualisation
• Index: Computer Science

A practical guide to building programmable networks using OpenDaylightAbout This Book• Learn and understand how SDN controllers operate and integrate with networks; this book's step-by-step tutorials will give you a strong foundation in SDN, NVF, and OpenDayLight.• Learn how to map legacy Layer 2/3 networking technologies in the SDN world• Add new services and capabilities to your infrastructure and quickly adopt SDN and NFV within your organization with OpenDayLight.• Integrate and manage software-defined networks efficiently in your organization.• Build innovative network applications with OpenDayLight and save time and resources.Who This Book Is ForThis book targets network engineers, network programmers and developers, administrators, and anyone with some level of networking experience who'd like to deploy OpenDayLight effectively. Familiarity with the day-to-day operations of computer networks is expectedWhat You Will Learn• Transition from legacy networking to software-defined networking• Learn how SDN controllers work and manage a network using southbound and northbound APIs• Learn how to deploy the OpenDayLight SDN controller and integrate it with virtual switches• Understand the basic design and operation of the OpenDaylight platform• Build simple MD-SAL OpenDaylight applications• Build applications on top of OpenDayLight to trigger network changes based on different events• Integrate OpenStack with OpenDayLight to build a fully managed network• Learn how to build a software-defined datacenter using NFV and service-chaining technologiesIn DetailOpenDaylight is an open source, software-defined network controller based on standard protocols. It aims to accelerate the adoption of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and create a solid foundation for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).SDN is a vast subject; many network engineers find it difficult to get started with using and operating different SDN platforms. This book will give you a practical bridge from SDN theory to the practical, real-world use of SDN in datacenters and by cloud providers.The book will help you understand the features and use cases for SDN, NFV, and OpenDaylight.NFV uses virtualization concepts and techniques to create virtual classes for node functions. Used together, SDN and NFV can elevate the standards of your network architecture; generic hardware-saving costs and the advanced and abstracted software will give you the freedom to evolve your network in the future without having to invest more in costly equipment.By the end of this book, you will have learned how to design and deploy OpenDaylight networks and integrate them with physical network switches. You will also have mastered basic network programming over the SDN fabric.Style and approachThis is a step-by-step tutorial aimed at getting you up-to-speed with OpenDayLight and ready to adopt it for your SDN (Software-Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) ecosystem.

Overview of OpenDaylight

This chapter is about the OpenDaylight project and its components, history, and versions. It is a complex project based on multiple components that are tightly integrated. The aim of this chapter is to make you familiar with the architecture of OpenDaylight so you have a better understanding of how OpenDaylight works and the logic behind it.

We will learn the following topics here:

• Overview of OpenDaylight components
• OpenDaylight modules
• The NeXt UI

Overview of OpenDaylight components

As discussed in Chapter 1, Introduction to SDN - Transformation from Legacy to SDN, ODL is a modular platform for software-defined networking. It is not a single piece of software; it's a combination of all integrated projects under one umbrella.

ODL has a board and chair persons; they decide the priority of each project. This team consists of a group of developers or business leaders who sponsor projects and drive the need and motivation required to cater to specific requirements.

Each project has a project proposal; this is the first step when it comes to launching a feature in ODL.

The structure of ODL is similar to that of OpenStack. The difference is that OpenStack consists of different projects that are managed by different project groups.

The following map shows a high level view of ODL projects. We will look at each one of them so you can understand their features and functions.

Some of the projects are called Main; these are projects listed as the main components of ODL. Some others are more niche projects; they are not similar to Main and are designed to deliver a specific need, probably for a specific use case.

The following table summarizes the current ODL modules and their use:

Module name	Type	Use
AAA	Security	Authentication authorization accounting module; provides AAA security service
ALTO	Networking	Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO); provides network maps and cost maps
Armoury	Core	The controller sometimes needs to request the workload manager to compute resources and/or get Network Function (NF) (physical or virtual) orchestrations to provide its services
Atrium	Core	SDN distribution packaging
BGP LS PCEP	Networking	BGP PCEP southbound module
BIER	Networking	Bit Indexed Explicit Replication(BIER); BIER introduces a method for multicast flow forwarding without storing states in every node along the multicast path
CAPWAP	Networking	Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) is a southbound protocol for managing and provisioning of wireless access points.
Cardinal	Management	A monitoring service
Centinel	Management	A distributed, reliable framework for efficiently collecting, aggregating, and sinking streaming data across persistence DB and stream analyzers
Controller Shield	Security	The controller shield project aims at creating a repository called the Unified Security Plugin (USecPlugin); this is a general purpose plugin that provides controller security information to northbound applications. This information will be collected by the plugin and may be used to configure firewalls and create IP blacklists for the network. With information, we mean collating the source of different attacks reported in southbound plugins, suspected controller intrusions, or information about other trusted controllers in the network.
Daexim	Management	This is a target use case related to system upgrade; it enables the development of importing or exporting data administrative procedures.
DIDM	Networking	Device Identification Driver Management (DIDM)
DluxApps	Management	A web UI
EMAN	Management	Refers to energy management
FaaS	Networking	In general, FaaS aims to create a common abstraction layer on top of a physical network
Federation	Management	In order to allow multiple ODL clusters to cooperate (federate) for a given application, there is a need to allow state exchange between ODL clusters federation helps us do this.
Genius	Core	The genius project provides generic network interfaces, utilities, and services. Any ODL application can use it to achieve interference-free coexistence with other applications.
Group-Based Policy (GBP)	Management	This is an intent-based system for a network. It implements a system based on what you want, that is, it offers services based on user requests.
Honeycomb	Management	Honeycomb exposes bridge domain models via f YANG. The purpose of this project is to build a controller app that allows OpenDaylight to build virtual bridge domains that can then be configured across multiple honeycomb agents.
Infrastructure utilities	Core	This project offers various utilities and infrastructures for other projects to use
IoTDM	Management	The IoT Data Management (IoTDM) project is an open source implementation of one M2M running on OpenDaylight
JSON-RPC2.0	Core	JSON-RPC2.0 aims to provide binding for an ODL data store
Kafka producer	Management	The Kafka producer plugin is a northbound plugin that allows you to stream data from OpenDaylight to a Kafka endpoint on real-time basis.
L2 switch	Networking	Laye...