OpenVirteX

TLDR

OpenVirteX builds on FlowVisor and acts as an OpenFlow controller proxy between an operator’s network and tenants’ network OSes. The authors present OpenVirteX as a platform that enables operators to create and manage virtual Software‑Defined Networks. OpenVirteX allows tenants to specify their vSDN topology and addressing and run their own NOS, while the platform provides a virtualized control plane. Evaluation shows that OpenVirteX delivers configurable vSDNs with modest control‑channel overhead and supports features such as link resilience, snapshotting, and migration.

Abstract

We present OpenVirteX, a network virtualization platform that enables operators to create and manage virtual Software Defined Networks (vSDNs). Tenants are free to specify the topology and addressing scheme of their vSDN, and run their own Network Operating System (NOS) to control it. Since OpenVirteX logically decouples vSDNs from the infrastructure, it also enables the introduction of features such as link and switch resiliency, and network snapshotting and migration of these tenant networks. OpenVirteX builds on the design of FlowVisor, and functions as an OpenFlow controller proxy between an operator's network and the tenants' network OSes. Our evaluations of this implementation show that i) OpenVirteX is capable of presenting tenants with configurable vSDNs while incurring a modest overhead to the control channel, and ii) that our architecture enables the introduction of features and enhancements such as link resilience to tenant networks.