Open vSwitch

What Does Open vSwitch Mean?

Open vSwitch is an open-source virtual switch software designed for virtual servers. The role of this software is to forward traffic between different virtual machines (VM) within the same host and even traffic between a VM and a physical network. This supports standard management interfaces like NetFlow, sFlow, CLI and RSPAN. Open vSwitch can accept program extensions and control using OpenFLow, as well as make use of the OVSDB management protocol.

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Techopedia Explains Open vSwitch

Open vSwitch is designed to be compatible with modern switching chipsets so that it can be ported to high-fanout switches, thus providing the same flexibility of control to physical infrastructure as virtual ones.

Open vSwitch is able to run on any Linux-based virtualization platform with a kernel of 2.6.18 or later. These platforms are VirtualBox, KVM, Xen, XenServer and the Xen Cloud Platform. Open vSwitch is written in C and can be ported to any environment. As of Linux 3.3, it is part of the mainline kernel.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…