Installation Guide

8 HP DCN: Overview and Infrastructure
There are three main components in the HP DCN solution: HP Virtualized Services Directory
(HP VSD), HP Virtualized Services Controller (HP VSC) and HP Virtual Routing and Switching
(HP VRS).
HP Virtualized Services Directory
HP VSD is a programmable policy and analytics engine that provides a flexible and
hierarchical network policy framework that enables IT administrators to define and enforce
resource policies.
HP VSD contains a multi-tenant service directory which supports role-based administration of
users, computers, and network resources. It also manages network resource assignments such
as IP and MAC addresses.
HP VSD enables the definition of sophisticated statistics rules such as:
• collection frequencies
• rolling averages and samples
• threshold crossing alerts (TCAs).
When a TCA occurs it will trigger an event that can be exported to external systems
through a generic messaging bus.
Statistics are aggregated over hours, days and months and stored in a Hadoop® analytics
cluster to facilitate data mining and performance reporting.
HP VSD is composed of many components and modules, but all required components can run
on a single Linux server or in a single Linux virtual machine. Redundancy requires multiple
servers or VMs.
To get a license key to activate your HP VSD, contact your HP Sales Representative.
HP Virtualized Services Controller
HP VSC functions as the robust network control plane for DCs, maintaining a full view of per-
tenant network and service topologies. Through the HP VSC, virtual routing and switching
constructs are established to program the network forwarding plane, HP VRS, using the
OpenFlow™ protocol.
The HP VSC communicates with the VSD policy engine using Extensible Messaging and
Presence Protocol (XMPP). An ejabberd XMPP server/cluster is used to distribute messages
between the HP VSD and HP VSC entities.
Multiple HP VSC instances can be federated within and across DCs by leveraging MP-BGP.
The HP VSC is based on HP DCN Operating System (DCNOS) and runs in a virtual machine
environment.
HP Virtual Routing and Switching
HP VRS is an enhanced Open vSwitch (OVS) implementation that constitutes the network
forwarding plane. It encapsulates and de-encapsulates user traffic, enforcing L2-L4 traffic
policies as defined by the HP VSD. The HP VRS tracks VM creation, migration and deletion
events in order to dynamically adjust network connectivity.