Deployment Guide

4.2 DNOS-OF Product Details

4.2.1 High Level Architecture

The network OS portion of DNOS-OF consists of minified Debian Linux kernel with a BusyBox distribution

for the main underlying core of the platform operating environment. There is some additional kernel

framework consisting of the kernel mode interface BDE drivers provided by the switch SDK.

There are also user mode drivers for all of the target platform hardware, which together makes up the Board

Support Package (BSP). There is also SDN agent functionality that handles the northbound interface to the

SDN controller. There is also functionality that implements, translates and encapsulates the SDN OpenFlow

1.3.4 protocol capability into instructions specific to the switch ASIC (the OF-DPA layer), as well as

functionality that controls the interface between the open source agent and the switch application. This

includes a CLI provided by the underlying platform interface.

The DNOS-OF 1.0 firmware was initially targeted for the N3024 and N3048 N-series family of campus

Ethernet switches from Dell and later added the PoE versions, N3024P and N3048P. DNOS-OF 1.1 added

support for the remaining N Series platforms, N1524, N1524P, N1548, N1548P, N2024, N2024P, N2048,

N2048P, N4032, N4032F, N4064, and N4064F.

Below are the primary components that make up the DNOS-OF firmware architecture in release 1.1.

Note that the OpenFlow controllers shown in this diagram are the ones officially supported by DNOS-OF

1.1, but any controller that is OpenFlow 1.3.4 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, and 2) some

knowledge and support for the limitations of the hardware SOC based flow tables.