Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet Explained

Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) is a tunneling and virtualization technology for computer networks, created and backed by IBM. DOVE allows creation of network virtualization layers for deploying, controlling, and managing multiple independent and isolated network applications over a shared physical network infrastructure.^[1]

Overview

The tunneling format is decoupled from the logical network view offered by DOVE, and defines only the way frames are encapsulated to be transferred by the underlying network infrastructure. As a notable difference from other network virtualization solutions (such as OTV), this allows DOVE not to be limited to providing OSI layer 2 emulation only (for example, passing Ethernet frames).

Logical components of the DOVE architecture are DOVE controllers and DOVE switches (abbreviated as dSwitch). DOVE controllers perform management functions, and one part of the control plane functions across DOVE switches. DOVE switches perform the encapsulation of layer 2 frames into UDP packets using the Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) frame format, and provide virtual interfaces for virtual machines to plug into, similarly to how physical Ethernet switches provide ports for network interface controller (NIC) connections. DOVE switches are running as part of virtual machine hypervisors.^[2] ^[3]

Advantages

Primary advantages of DOVE include the following:^[4]

No dependency on the underlying physical network and protocols
Use of the existing IP network infrastructure
No addresses of virtual machines are present in Ethernet switches, resulting in smaller MAC tables and less complex STP layouts
No limitations related to the Virtual LAN (VLAN) technology, resulting in more than 16 million possible separate networks, compared to the VLAN's limit of 4,000
No dependency on the IP multicast traffic

Implementations

, DOVE components are implemented as part of VMware's hypervisors, while implementations for the Linux KVM and Open vSwitch are planned.^[5] ^[6]

DOVE extensions for VXLAN were merged into the Linux kernel mainline in kernel version 3.8, which was released on February 18, 2013.^[7] ^[8] Appropriate extensions to related userspace configuration utilities were added into version 3.8.0 of the iproute2 utilities, which was released on February 21, 2013.^[9]

External links

IBM DOVE Takes Flight with New SDN Overlay, Fixes VXLAN Scaling Issues, March 26, 2013, by Roy Chua
Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) integration with OpenStack, IEEE, May 2013, by Rami Cohen, Katherine Barabash and Liran Schour
Building an Open, Adaptive and Responsive Data Center using OpenDaylight, OpenDaylight summit, February 4, 2014, by Vijoy Pandey
Software Defined Network, IBM revelation day, November 6, 2013, by Igor Marty

Notes and References

Web site: Designing Modular Overlay Solutions for Network Virtualization . August 28, 2011 . November 22, 2013 . Liane Lewin-Eytan . Katherine Barabash . Rami Cohen . Vinit Jain . Anna Levin . IBM Research Division . PDF.
Web site: Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) Networks . 2012 . November 22, 2013 . Renato Recio . .
Web site: IBM DOVE: Big Blue enters the network virtualization battleground . September 2012 . November 22, 2013 . Shamus McGillicuddy . techtarget.com.
Web site: Software Defined Networking using VXLAN . LinuxCon Edinburgh . October 21, 2013 . November 22, 2013 . Thomas Richter . IBM Research and Development, Linux Technology Center .
Web site: IBM unfurls SDN network manager . March 27, 2013 . November 22, 2013 . Jack Clark . The Register.
Web site: Open DOVE project proposal . 2013 . November 22, 2013 . IBM System Networking .
Web site: Linux kernel 3.8, Section 10. Networking . February 18, 2013 . July 14, 2014 . kernelnewbies.org.
Web site: kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git: Add DOVE extensions for VXLAN . Linux kernel source tree . November 20, 2012 . November 23, 2013 . kernel.org.
Web site: iproute2 3.8.0 . February 21, 2013 . November 23, 2013 . Stephen Hemminger . LWN.net.