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List:       openvswitch-discuss
Subject:    [ovs-discuss] An OVS switch appliance?
From:       jesse () nicira ! com (Jesse Gross)
Date:       2011-02-04 23:20:20
Message-ID: AANLkTikhWMEMJ8Cyp=5rh_4Kd1HyL4hKfA7ufBbXgSfi () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Matthew Law <matt at webcontracts.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was chatting with someone recently about how expensive 10gbit switches
> are -we'd both expected continuing adoption to bring the price down a lot
> more than it has at this point. ?This lead on to someone saying: "how much
> would it cost to make an appliance from, say, a 2U server and stuff it
> full of 10gbit NICs? ?-you could put linux on it and use something like
> openvswitch with a friendly web or terminal gui to administer it..."
>
> I don't know if it has already been done or is even sensible, but I
> thought it would be interesting to hear what people think of such an idea
> :-)
>
> Is it possible/stupid/inefficient? ?Is OVS lacking anything that would be
> needed for something like that? (the context was regarding switching of
> storage data for VMs using iSCSI).

It's possible and could make sense if you only need a few ports - it
certainly wouldn't work very well if you are looking for a 24 or 48
port switch.  As you ramp up the number of interfaces you'll start to
hit limitations in the number of PCI slots, bus bandwidth, CPU
consumption, etc.  It's pretty hard match dedicated hardware in terms
of latency, aggregate bandwidth, or power consumption on a general
purpose platform.  None of these are specific to Open vSwitch, just
the difference between specialized and generic hardware.


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