Deployment Guide

1 Executive summary – DNOS-OF

SDN and OpenFlow is fast becoming a requirement in campus networking products due to the perceived

strategic value of SDN and the high perceived cost of proprietary legacy network gear. DNOS-OF is a campus

networking product based on existing N Series hardware and a custom firmware image.

1.1 DNOS-OF Overview

DNOS-OF is a web downloadable firmware image available for the Dell Networking N-Series hardware

that enables OpenFlow 1.3.4 support as a pure OpenFlow switch. It is intended to:

• Provide basic easy to use pure OpenFlow mode support on N-Series switches to enable SDN for Campus

networks, no hybrid mode is supported.

• Co-exist with the existing N-Series firmware images and image management, while not affecting any

existing functionality. This requires the ability to load DNOS-OF code from within the users existing

firmware, run as a pure OF switch, and revert back with no impact to the users existing firmware, including

their running configuration and switch settings.

• Leverage Broadcom’s OFDPA (OpenFlow Data Path Abstraction) SDK to provide basic OpenFlow agent

integration, along with abstracting the SOC hardware tables when presenting them as OpenFlow flow

tables.

• Network administrators are able to select the OS for the switch in the same manner they select which

firmware image they want to run today.

• Provide limited and simpler features and functionality in order to allow for delivery of a quick and low cost

solution that is easy to test out in customer lab environments.

• Provide support for the Ryu OpenFlow controller and the NEC PF6800 PFC controller cluster.

1.2 About This Document

This guide describes the product and its purpose, how to configure, monitor, and maintain DNOS-OF on

the Dell Networking N-Series switches, a reference for the DNOS-OF command-line interface (CLI) and

some basic examples showing how to set up Ryu for a single end to end Layer 2 traffic flow in DNOS-OF,

and a configuration guide for setting up Layer 2 vBridges and Layer 3 vRouters with VTN’s (virtual tenant

networks) in the NEC controller.

1.3 Additional Documentation

Documents for the Dell Networking series switches are available at dell.com/support.