SDN Fabric Enables Deep Visibility and Resilience for

OpenStack Networks

The CCF OpenStack Neutron plugin for L2 networking provides

resiliency necessary for production-grade OpenStack

deployments. The CCF Controller acts as the single pane for

provisioning, troubleshooting, visibility and analytics of the

entire physical network environment. This enables data center

operators to deploy applications rapidly, simplifies operational

workflows and provides immediate root–cause analysis when

application performance issues arise.

Scale-out (Elastic) Fabric

CCF’s flexible, scale-out design allows users to start at the size

and scale that satisfies their immediate needs while future

proofing their growth needs. By providing a choice of hardware

and software solutions across the layers of the networking

stack and pay-asyou-grow economics, starting small scale

and growing the fabric gradually instead of locking into a

fully integrated proprietary solution, provides a path to a

modern data center network. Once new switches are added,

the controller adds those switches to the fabric and extends

the current configuration hence reducing any error that may

happen otherwise. Customers take advantage of one-time

configuration of the fabric.

DC-grade Resilience

CCF provides DC grade resiliency that allows the fabric to

operate in the face of link or node failures as well as in the

rare situation when the controller pair is unavailable (headless

mode). Swapping a switch (in case of HW failure or switch

repurpose) is similar to changing a line card in a modular

chassis. After re-cabling and power up, the switch boots up by

downloading the right image, configuration and forwarding

tables. Additionally, the CCF Controller coordinates and

orchestrates the entire fabric upgrade ensuring minimum

fabric down time. These functionalities further enhance fabric

resiliency and simplify operations.

Using CCF: A 3-Tier Application Example

CCF supports a multi-tenant model, which is easily customizable

for the specific requirements of different organizations and

applications. This model increases the speed of application

provisioning, simplifies configuration, and helps with analytics

and troubleshooting. Some of the important terminology used

to describe the functionality include:

• E-VPC Tenant — A logical grouping of L2 and/or L3

networks and services.

• Logical Segment — An L2 network consisting of logical

ports and end-points. This defines the default broadcast

domain boundary.

• Logical Router — A tenant router providing routing and

policy enforcement services for inter-segment, inter-tenant,

and external networks.

• External Core Router — A physical router that provides

connectivity between Pods within a data center and to the

Internet.

• Tenant Services — Services available to tenants and

deployed as dedicated or shared services (individually or as

part of a service chain).

Datasheet

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Figure 4: CCF Graphical User Interface (GUI)