Deployment Guide

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4.2 DNOS-OF Product Details
4.2.1 Design
The network OS portion of DNOS-OF consists of modified Debian Linux kernel for the main underlying
core of the platform operating environment, along with an additional kernel framework consisting of the
Debian Linux user and kernel mode interface BDE drivers provided by the switch SDK.
There are also user mode drivers for all of the target hardware, which together make up the Board Support
Package (BSP). There is SDN agent code to interface north bound to an SDN controller. There is code to
implement and encapsulate SDN OpenFlow 1.3.4 capability specifically on the switch chips (the OF-DPA
layer), as well as interface code between the open source agent and our agent. Additionally there is a CLI
provided by the underlying platform code and developed inhouse by Dell Networking Engineering.
The DNOS-OF 1.0 firmware was initially targeted for the N3024 and N3048 N-series family of campus
Ethernet switches from Dell. Later adding the PoE versions, N3024P and N3048P. With the use of Debian
Linux, and built from a modular architecture, all of the DNOS-OF components and code have been
designed and built to be 100% compatible with industry standard architectures and approaches.
Below are the primary components that make up the DNOS-OF firmware architecture in release 1.0.
Platforms targeted for Phase 1 SDN support - N3024/3024P/N3048/N3048P
OS toolchain and build system for application and libraries
OS user mode system services and libraries
Local user mode applications
Debiuan Linux Kernel
OpenFlow Agent Subsystem
Campus N Series OpenFlow Switch – Phase 1 High Level Firmware Overview
OpenFlow Agent (Indigo)
CLI
Reduced subset of the CLI commands currently supported in
PowerConnect, PLUS the new commands needed for OF.
I2C/MiiM/MDIO GPIO/CPLD Device Trees (.dtb) Other Kernel Drivers
Linux_user_bde
Broadcom switch ASIC
Broadcom SDK
LibC/UCLibC
boot loader
HW control
(fans, PSU, etc)
Linux_kernel_bde
Other User Mode
Drivers
SSH telnet
syslog
OF-DPA
OF-DPA API
OpenFlow Agent (Indigo) to OF-DPA translation layer
This is where we tie the open source agent code to the vendor
proprietary OF-DPA code
OOB Management
Ryu OpenFlow Controller
(Phase/Release 1.0)
Note that the OpenFlow controller shown here were the initial ones targeted, but any controller that is
OpenFlow 1.3.4 multi-table compliant should work with DNOS-OF. This is mainly dependent on the
ability of the specific controller software to work with 1) OpenFlow 1.3.4, 2) multiple tables presented to
the controller, and 3) some knowledge and support for the limitations of the hardware SOC based flow
tables.