Last week Big Switch Networks announced that OpenStack developers con now plug-in to the company’s open source OpenFlow Controller, Floodlight, for programable networking in multi-tenant cloud and virtualized environments.
The objective is to create and manage virtual networks using together both hypervisor-based virtual switches and OpenFlow physical switches filling the automation gap, in virtualized and cloud based infrastructures.
With today’s announcement, developers now have the programmability and vendor independence of OpenFlow on top of the benefits of cloud automation from OpenStack. Floodlight’s OpenStack support relies on Quantum, a network connectivity as a service between interface devices (e.g. vNICs) managed by other OpenStack services. In addition to support for hypervisor-based switches like Open vSwitch, Floodlight brings support for a growing ecosystem of physical OpenFlow switches. Additionally, Floodlight offers an open API platform on which OpenStack-specific SDN applications can be created. Unlike other OpenStack-ready technology currently available, this plugin provides SDN innovators a bridge to OpenStack through an open source controller which works with vSwitched as well as OpenFlow switches on the market.