1 Open vSwitch <http://openvswitch.org>
3 Frequently Asked Questions
4 ==========================
9 Q: What is Open vSwitch?
11 A: Open vSwitch is a production quality open source software switch
12 designed to be used as a vswitch in virtualized server environments. A
13 vswitch forwards traffic between different VMs on the same physical host
14 and also forwards traffic between VMs and the physical network. Open
15 vSwitch supports standard management interfaces (e.g. sFlow, NetFlow,
16 RSPAN, CLI), and is open to programmatic extension and control using
17 OpenFlow and the OVSDB management protocol.
19 Open vSwitch as designed to be compatible with modern switching
20 chipsets. This means that it can be ported to existing high-fanout
21 switches allowing the same flexible control of the physical
22 infrastructure as the virtual infrastructure. It also means that
23 Open vSwitch will be able to take advantage of on-NIC switching
24 chipsets as their functionality matures.
26 Q: What virtualization platforms can use Open vSwitch?
28 A: Open vSwitch can currently run on any Linux-based virtualization
29 platform (kernel 2.6.18 and newer), including: KVM, VirtualBox, Xen,
30 Xen Cloud Platform, XenServer. As of Linux 3.3 it is part of the
31 mainline kernel. The bulk of the code is written in platform-
32 independent C and is easily ported to other environments. We welcome
33 inquires about integrating Open vSwitch with other virtualization
36 Q: How can I try Open vSwitch?
38 A: The Open vSwitch source code can be built on a Linux system. You can
39 build and experiment with Open vSwitch on any Linux machine.
40 Packages for various Linux distributions are available on many
41 platforms, including: Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora.
43 You may also download and run a virtualization platform that already
44 has Open vSwitch integrated. For example, download a recent ISO for
45 XenServer or Xen Cloud Platform. Be aware that the version
46 integrated with a particular platform may not be the most recent Open
49 Q: Does Open vSwitch only work on Linux?
51 A: No, Open vSwitch has been ported to a number of different operating
52 systems and hardware platforms. Most of the development work occurs
53 on Linux, but the code should be portable to any POSIX system. We've
54 seen Open vSwitch ported to a number of different platforms,
55 including FreeBSD, Windows, and even non-POSIX embedded systems.
57 By definition, the Open vSwitch Linux kernel module only works on
58 Linux and will provide the highest performance. However, a userspace
59 datapath is available that should be very portable.
61 Q: What's involved with porting Open vSwitch to a new platform or
64 A: The PORTING document describes how one would go about porting Open
65 vSwitch to a new operating system or hardware platform.
67 Q: Why would I use Open vSwitch instead of the Linux bridge?
69 A: Open vSwitch is specially designed to make it easier to manage VM
70 network configuration and monitor state spread across many physical
71 hosts in dynamic virtualized environments. Please see WHY-OVS for a
72 more detailed description of how Open vSwitch relates to the Linux
75 Q: How is Open vSwitch related to distributed virtual switches like the
76 VMware vNetwork distributed switch or the Cisco Nexus 1000V?
78 A: Distributed vswitch applications (e.g., VMware vNetwork distributed
79 switch, Cisco Nexus 1000V) provide a centralized way to configure and
80 monitor the network state of VMs that are spread across many physical
81 hosts. Open vSwitch is not a distributed vswitch itself, rather it
82 runs on each physical host and supports remote management in a way
83 that makes it easier for developers of virtualization/cloud
84 management platforms to offer distributed vswitch capabilities.
86 To aid in distribution, Open vSwitch provides two open protocols that
87 are specially designed for remote management in virtualized network
88 environments: OpenFlow, which exposes flow-based forwarding state,
89 and the OVSDB management protocol, which exposes switch port state.
90 In addition to the switch implementation itself, Open vSwitch
91 includes tools (ovs-controller, ovs-ofctl, ovs-vsctl) that developers
92 can script and extend to provide distributed vswitch capabilities
93 that are closely integrated with their virtualization management
96 Q: Why doesn't Open vSwitch support distribution?
98 A: Open vSwitch is intended to be a useful component for building
99 flexible network infrastructure. There are many different approaches
100 to distribution which balance trade-offs between simplicity,
101 scalability, hardware compatibility, convergence times, logical
102 forwarding model, etc. The goal of Open vSwitch is to be able to
103 support all as a primitive building block rather than choose a
104 particular point in the distributed design space.
106 Q: How can I contribute to the Open vSwitch Community?
108 A: You can start by joining the mailing lists and helping to answer
109 questions. You can also suggest improvements to documentation. If
110 you have a feature or bug you would like to work on, send a mail to
111 one of the mailing lists:
113 http://openvswitch.org/mlists/
120 Q: What does it mean for an Open vSwitch release to be LTS (long-term
123 A: All official releases have been through a comprehensive testing
124 process and are suitable for production use. Planned releases will
125 occur several times a year. If a significant bug is identified in an
126 LTS release, we will provide an updated release that includes the
127 fix. Releases that are not LTS may not be fixed and may just be
128 supplanted by the next major release. The current LTS release is
131 Q: What features are not available in the Open vSwitch kernel datapath
132 that ships as part of the upstream Linux kernel?
134 A: The kernel module in upstream Linux 3.3 and later does not include
135 the following features:
137 - Bridge compatibility, that is, support for the ovs-brcompatd
138 daemon that (if you enable it) lets "brctl" and other Linux
139 bridge tools transparently work with Open vSwitch instead.
141 We do not expect bridge compatibility to ever be available in
142 upstream Linux. If you need bridge compatibility, use the
143 kernel module from the Open vSwitch distribution instead of the
144 upstream Linux kernel module.
146 - Tunnel and patch virtual ports, that is, interfaces with type
147 "gre", "ipsec_gre", "capwap", or "patch". It is possible to
148 create tunnels in Linux and attach them to Open vSwitch as
149 system devices. However, they cannot be dynamically created
150 through the OVSDB protocol or set the tunnel ids as a flow
153 Work is in progress in adding these features to the upstream
154 Linux version of the Open vSwitch kernel module. For now, if
155 you need these features, use the kernel module from the Open
156 vSwitch distribution instead of the upstream Linux kernel
159 Q: What features are not available when using the userspace datapath?
161 A: Tunnel and patch virtual ports are not supported, as described in the
162 previous answer. It is also not possible to use queue-related
163 actions. On Linux kernels before 2.6.39, maximum-sized VLAN packets
164 may not be transmitted.
167 Configuration Problems
168 ----------------------
170 Q: I created a bridge and added my Ethernet port to it, using commands
174 ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth0
176 and as soon as I ran the "add-port" command I lost all connectivity
179 A: A physical Ethernet device that is part of an Open vSwitch bridge
180 should not have an IP address. If one does, then that IP address
181 will not be fully functional.
183 You can restore functionality by moving the IP address to an Open
184 vSwitch "internal" device, such as the network device named after
185 the bridge itself. For example, assuming that eth0's IP address is
186 192.168.128.5, you could run the commands below to fix up the
189 ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0
190 ifconfig br0 192.168.128.5
192 (If your only connection to the machine running OVS is through the
193 IP address in question, then you would want to run all of these
194 commands on a single command line, or put them into a script.) If
195 there were any additional routes assigned to eth0, then you would
196 also want to use commands to adjust these routes to go through br0.
198 If you use DHCP to obtain an IP address, then you should kill the
199 DHCP client that was listening on the physical Ethernet interface
200 (e.g. eth0) and start one listening on the internal interface
201 (e.g. br0). You might still need to manually clear the IP address
202 from the physical interface (e.g. with "ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0").
204 There is no compelling reason why Open vSwitch must work this way.
205 However, this is the way that the Linux kernel bridge module has
206 always worked, so it's a model that those accustomed to Linux
207 bridging are already used to. Also, the model that most people
208 expect is not implementable without kernel changes on all the
209 versions of Linux that Open vSwitch supports.
211 By the way, this issue is not specific to physical Ethernet
212 devices. It applies to all network devices except Open vswitch
215 Q: I created a bridge and added a couple of Ethernet ports to it,
216 using commands like these:
219 ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth0
220 ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth1
222 and now my network seems to have melted: connectivity is unreliable
223 (even connectivity that doesn't go through Open vSwitch), all the
224 LEDs on my physical switches are blinking, wireshark shows
225 duplicated packets, and CPU usage is very high.
227 A: More than likely, you've looped your network. Probably, eth0 and
228 eth1 are connected to the same physical Ethernet switch. This
229 yields a scenario where OVS receives a broadcast packet on eth0 and
230 sends it out on eth1, then the physical switch connected to eth1
231 sends the packet back on eth0, and so on forever. More complicated
232 scenarios, involving a loop through multiple switches, are possible
235 The solution depends on what you are trying to do:
237 - If you added eth0 and eth1 to get higher bandwidth or higher
238 reliability between OVS and your physical Ethernet switch,
239 use a bond. The following commands create br0 and then add
240 eth0 and eth1 as a bond:
243 ovs-vsctl add-bond br0 bond0 eth0 eth1
245 Bonds have tons of configuration options. Please read the
246 documentation on the Port table in ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5)
249 - Perhaps you don't actually need eth0 and eth1 to be on the
250 same bridge. For example, if you simply want to be able to
251 connect each of them to virtual machines, then you can put
252 each of them on a bridge of its own:
255 ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth0
258 ovs-vsctl add-port br1 eth1
260 and then connect VMs to br0 and br1. (A potential
261 disadvantage is that traffic cannot directly pass between br0
262 and br1. Instead, it will go out eth0 and come back in eth1,
265 - If you have a redundant or complex network topology and you
266 want to prevent loops, turn on spanning tree protocol (STP).
267 The following commands create br0, enable STP, and add eth0
268 and eth1 to the bridge. The order is important because you
269 don't want have to have a loop in your network even
273 ovs-vsctl set bridge br0 stp_enable=true
274 ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth0
275 ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth1
277 The Open vSwitch implementation of STP is not well tested.
278 Please report any bugs you observe, but if you'd rather avoid
279 acting as a beta tester then another option might be your
282 Q: I can't seem to use Open vSwitch in a wireless network.
284 A: Wireless base stations generally only allow packets with the source
285 MAC address of NIC that completed the initial handshake.
286 Therefore, without MAC rewriting, only a single device can
287 communicate over a single wireless link.
289 This isn't specific to Open vSwitch, it's enforced by the access
290 point, so the same problems will show up with the Linux bridge or
291 any other way to do bridging.
299 A: Many drivers in Linux kernels before version 3.3 had VLAN-related
300 bugs. If you are having problems with VLANs that you suspect to be
301 driver related, then you have several options:
303 - Upgrade to Linux 3.3 or later.
305 - Build and install a fixed version of the particular driver
306 that is causing trouble, if one is available.
308 - Use a NIC whose driver does not have VLAN problems.
310 - Use "VLAN splinters", a feature in Open vSwitch 1.4 and later
311 that works around bugs in kernel drivers. To enable VLAN
312 splinters on interface eth0, use the command:
314 ovs-vsctl set interface eth0 other-config:enable-vlan-splinters=true
316 For VLAN splinters to be effective, Open vSwitch must know
317 which VLANs are in use. See the "VLAN splinters" section in
318 the Interface table in ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5) for details on
319 how Open vSwitch infers in-use VLANs.
321 VLAN splinters increase memory use and reduce performance, so
322 use them only if needed.
324 - Apply the "vlan workaround" patch from the XenServer kernel
325 patch queue, build Open vSwitch against this patched kernel,
326 and then use ovs-vlan-bug-workaround(8) to enable the VLAN
327 workaround for each interface whose driver is buggy.
329 (This is a nontrivial exercise, so this option is included
330 only for completeness.)
332 It is not always easy to tell whether a Linux kernel driver has
333 buggy VLAN support. The ovs-vlan-test(8) and ovs-test(8) utilities
334 can help you test. See their manpages for details. Of the two
335 utilities, ovs-test(8) is newer and more thorough, but
336 ovs-vlan-test(8) may be easier to use.
338 Q: VLANs still don't work. I've tested the driver so I know that it's OK.
340 A: Do you have VLANs enabled on the physical switch that OVS is
341 attached to? Make sure that the port is configured to trunk the
342 VLAN or VLANs that you are using with OVS.
344 Q: Outgoing VLAN-tagged traffic goes through OVS to my physical switch
345 and to its destination host, but OVS seems to drop incoming return
348 A: It's possible that you have the VLAN configured on your physical
349 switch as the "native" VLAN. In this mode, the switch treats
350 incoming packets either tagged with the native VLAN or untagged as
351 part of the native VLAN. It may also send outgoing packets in the
352 native VLAN without a VLAN tag.
354 If this is the case, you have two choices:
356 - Change the physical switch port configuration to tag packets
357 it forwards to OVS with the native VLAN instead of forwarding
360 - Change the OVS configuration for the physical port to a
361 native VLAN mode. For example, the following sets up a
362 bridge with port eth0 in "native-tagged" mode in VLAN 9:
365 ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth0 tag=9 vlan_mode=native-tagged
367 In this situation, "native-untagged" mode will probably work
368 equally well. Refer to the documentation for the Port table
369 in ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5) for more information.
371 Q: Can I configure an IP address on a VLAN?
373 A: Yes. Use an "internal port" configured as an access port. For
374 example, the following configures IP address 192.168.0.7 on VLAN 9.
375 That is, OVS will forward packets from eth0 to 192.168.0.7 only if
376 they have an 802.1Q header with VLAN 9. Conversely, traffic
377 forwarded from 192.168.0.7 to eth0 will be tagged with an 802.1Q
381 ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth0
382 ovs-vsctl add-port br0 vlan9 tag=9 -- set interface vlan9 type=internal
383 ifconfig vlan9 192.168.0.7
385 Q: My OpenFlow controller doesn't see the VLANs that I expect.
387 A: The configuration for VLANs in the Open vSwitch database (e.g. via
388 ovs-vsctl) only affects traffic that goes through Open vSwitch's
389 implementation of the OpenFlow "normal switching" action. By
390 default, when Open vSwitch isn't connected to a controller and
391 nothing has been manually configured in the flow table, all traffic
392 goes through the "normal switching" action. But, if you set up
393 OpenFlow flows on your own, through a controller or using ovs-ofctl
394 or through other means, then you have to implement VLAN handling
397 You can use "normal switching" as a component of your OpenFlow
398 actions, e.g. by putting "normal" into the lists of actions on
399 ovs-ofctl or by outputting to OFPP_NORMAL from an OpenFlow
400 controller. This will only be suitable for some situations,
407 Q: What versions of OpenFlow does Open vSwitch support?
409 A: Open vSwitch supports OpenFlow 1.0. It also includes a number of
410 extensions that bring many of the features from later versions of
411 OpenFlow. Work is underway to provide support for later versions and
414 http://openvswitch.org/development/openflow-1-x-plan/
416 Q: I'm getting "error type 45250 code 0". What's that?
418 A: This is a Open vSwitch extension to OpenFlow error codes. Open
419 vSwitch uses this extension when it must report an error to an
420 OpenFlow controller but no standard OpenFlow error code is
423 Open vSwitch logs the errors that it sends to controllers, so the
424 easiest thing to do is probably to look at the ovs-vswitchd log to
425 find out what the error was.
427 If you want to dissect the extended error message yourself, the
428 format is documented in include/openflow/nicira-ext.h in the Open
429 vSwitch source distribution. The extended error codes are
430 documented in lib/ofp-errors.h.
432 Q1: Some of the traffic that I'd expect my OpenFlow controller to see
433 doesn't actually appear through the OpenFlow connection, even
434 though I know that it's going through.
435 Q2: Some of the OpenFlow flows that my controller sets up don't seem
436 to apply to certain traffic, especially traffic between OVS and
437 the controller itself.
439 A: By default, Open vSwitch assumes that OpenFlow controllers are
440 connected "in-band", that is, that the controllers are actually
441 part of the network that is being controlled. In in-band mode,
442 Open vSwitch sets up special "hidden" flows to make sure that
443 traffic can make it back and forth between OVS and the controllers.
444 These hidden flows are higher priority than any flows that can be
445 set up through OpenFlow, and they are not visible through normal
446 OpenFlow flow table dumps.
448 Usually, the hidden flows are desirable and helpful, but
449 occasionally they can cause unexpected behavior. You can view the
450 full OpenFlow flow table, including hidden flows, on bridge br0
453 ovs-appctl bridge/dump-flows br0
455 to help you debug. The hidden flows are those with priorities
456 greater than 65535 (the maximum priority that can be set with
459 The DESIGN file at the top level of the Open vSwitch source
460 distribution describes the in-band model in detail.
462 If your controllers are not actually in-band (e.g. they are on
463 localhost via 127.0.0.1, or on a separate network), then you should
464 configure your controllers in "out-of-band" mode. If you have one
465 controller on bridge br0, then you can configure out-of-band mode
468 ovs-vsctl set controller br0 connection-mode=out-of-band
470 Q: I configured all my controllers for out-of-band control mode but
471 "ovs-appctl bridge/dump-flows" still shows some hidden flows.
473 A: You probably have a remote manager configured (e.g. with "ovs-vsctl
474 set-manager"). By default, Open vSwitch assumes that managers need
475 in-band rules set up on every bridge. You can disable these rules
478 ovs-vsctl set bridge br0 other-config:disable-in-band=true
480 This actually disables in-band control entirely for the bridge, as
481 if all the bridge's controllers were configured for out-of-band
484 Q: My OpenFlow controller doesn't see the VLANs that I expect.
486 A: See answer under "VLANs", above.
493 http://openvswitch.org/