faq: Start an OVN FAQ by giving a rationale for how it uses tunnels.

Signed-off-by: Ben Pfaff <blp@ovn.org>
Acked-by: Aaron Conole <aconole@redhat.com>

diff --git a/Documentation/automake.mk b/Documentation/automake.mk
index 8b47d22761e9627de3f9d7753b2b900398553c3e..683ca1442af0cdb98c91eb1294afa3a890846b9b 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/automake.mk
+++ b/Documentation/automake.mk
@@ -83,6 +83,7 @@ DOC_SOURCE = \
        Documentation/faq/general.rst \
        Documentation/faq/issues.rst \
        Documentation/faq/openflow.rst \
+       Documentation/faq/ovn.rst \
        Documentation/faq/qos.rst \
        Documentation/faq/releases.rst \
        Documentation/faq/terminology.rst \

diff --git a/Documentation/faq/index.rst b/Documentation/faq/index.rst
index 334b828b2229d3b438cb8bdb188d097606fe99e3..ad3cc2b6fafef63491bee83f04ba6e56d08b7077 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/faq/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/faq/index.rst
@@ -41,3 +41,4 @@ Open vSwitch FAQ
    terminology
    vlan
    vxlan
+   ovn

diff --git a/Documentation/faq/ovn.rst b/Documentation/faq/ovn.rst
new file mode 100644 (file)
index 0000000..4d96b4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/faq/ovn.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
+..
+      Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may
+      not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain
+      a copy of the License at
+
+          http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+      Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+      distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT
+      WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
+      License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations
+      under the License.
+
+      Convention for heading levels in Open vSwitch documentation:
+
+      =======  Heading 0 (reserved for the title in a document)
+      -------  Heading 1
+      ~~~~~~~  Heading 2
+      +++++++  Heading 3
+      '''''''  Heading 4
+
+      Avoid deeper levels because they do not render well.
+
+===
+OVN
+===
+
+Q: Why does OVN use STT and Geneve instead of VLANs or VXLAN (or GRE)?
+
+    A: OVN implements a fairly sophisticated packet processing pipeline in
+    "logical datapaths" that can implement switching or routing functionality.
+    A logical datapath has an ingress pipeline and an egress pipeline, and each
+    of these pipelines can include logic based on packet fields as well as
+    packet metadata such as the logical ingress and egress ports (the latter
+    only in the egress pipeline).
+
+    The processing for a logical datapath can be split across hypervisors.  In
+    particular, when a logical ingress pipeline executes an "output" action,
+    OVN passes the packet to the egress pipeline on the hypervisor (or, in the
+    case of output to a logical multicast group, hypervisors) on which the
+    logical egress port is located.  If this hypervisor is not the same as the
+    ingress hypervisor, then the packet has to be transmitted across a physical
+    network.
+
+    This situation is where tunneling comes in.  To send the packet to another
+    hypervisor, OVN encapsulates it with a tunnel protocol and sends the
+    encapsulated packet across the physical network.  When the remote
+    hypervisor receives the tunnel packet, it decapsulates it and passes it
+    through the logical egress pipeline.  To do so, it also needs the metadata,
+    that is, the logical ingress and egress ports.
+
+    Thus, to implement OVN logical packet processing, at least the following
+    metadata must pass across the physical network:
+
+    * Logical datapath ID, a 24-bit identifier.  In Geneve, OVN uses the VNI to
+      hold the logical datapath ID; in STT, OVN uses 24 bits of STT's 64-bit
+      context ID.
+
+    * Logical ingress port, a 15-bit identifier.  In Geneve, OVN uses an option
+      to hold the logical ingress port; in STT, 15 bits of the context ID.
+
+    * Logical egress port, a 16-bit identifier.  In Geneve, OVN uses an option
+      to hold the logical egress port; in STT, 16 bits of the context ID.
+
+    See ``ovn-architecture(7)``, under "Tunnel Encapsulations", for details.
+
+    Together, these metadata require 24 + 15 + 16 = 55 bits.  GRE provides 32
+    bits, VXLAN provides 24, and VLAN only provides 12.  Most notably, if
+    logical egress pipelines do not match on the logical ingress port, thereby
+    restricting the class of ACLs available to users, then this eliminates 15
+    bits, bringing the requirement down to 40 bits.  At this point, one can
+    choose to limit the size of the OVN logical network in various ways, e.g.:
+
+    * 16 bits of logical datapaths + 16 bits of logical egress ports.  This
+      combination fits within a 32-bit GRE tunnel key.
+
+    * 12 bits of logical datapaths + 12 bits of logical egress ports.  This
+      combination fits within a 24-bit VXLAN VNI.
+
+    * It's difficult to identify an acceptable compromise for a VLAN-based
+      deployment.
+
+    These compromises wouldn't suit every site, since some deployments
+    may need to allocate more bits to the datapath or egress port
+    identifiers.
+
+    As a side note, OVN does support VXLAN for use with ASIC-based top of rack
+    switches, using ``ovn-controller-vtep(8)`` and the OVSDB VTEP schema
+    described in ``vtep(5)``, but this limits the features available from OVN
+    to the subset available from the VTEP schema.