Configuration and Management working group (CMWG) of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) prepared OpenFlow Management and Configuration Protocol (OF-CONFIG) for switch management in an OpenFlow environment. Unfortunately, Open vSwitch (OVS), the leading open-source implementation of an OpenFlow switch, uses its own Open vSwitch Data Base management (OVSDB) protocol. This holds back a wider acceptance of the OF-CONFIG protocol.
To overcome this state, it is necessary to implement support of the OF-CONFIG protocol into OVS. This implementation should be easily available for the OVS users to allow them utilization of the OF-CONFIG protocol.
We are going to implement an application extending the OVS’s OVSDB server with an external application implementing the OF-CONFIG protocol. We utilize OVSDB server since it is highly integrated in the OVS architecture and bypassing the entire OVSDB would be counterproductive.
OF-CONFIG uses NETCONF as the asociated protocol. So, the OF-CONFIG protocol and the NETCONF protocol are interchangeable terms in this context.
The following diagram shows how the OF-CONFIG server is intergated into the Open vSwitch architecture. While the OF-CONFIG server is running as a system daemon (service), the NETCONF agents are invoked as an SSH Subsystem separately for each connected OF-CONFIG client.
+---------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| OVSDB | | OF-CONFIG | | OF-CONFIG |
| client | | client | ... | client |
+---------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
^ ^ ^
| | |
| NETCONF protocol
| | |
| v v
| +---------------+
| | SSH Server |
| +------+----+-----+----+------+
| | NETCONF | | NETCONF |
| | agent | ... | agent |
| +-----------+ +-----------+
| ^ ^
| | |
| v v
| +-----------+
| | OF-CONFIG |
| | server |
v +-----------+
+---------+ |
| OVSDB | |
| server |<----------------+
+---------+