Configure OVS

In this document, we start OVS manually. After powering on the Pica8 switch, users will see the following messages on the console display. Select choice "2" for OVS and enter "yes" to start OVS by manual.

Figure 6 – Start OVS Manually


Please refer to PicOS 1.6 OVS Configuration Guide, http://www.pica8.org/document/picos-1.6-ovs-configuration-guide.pdf, for the details how to configure OVS. First, we need to provide a fixed IP address to the Pica8 switch, create the OVS database, and launch the OVS database server and the switch daemon. Here are the commands:

• ifconfig eth0 172.16.0.234/24
• ovsdb-tool create /ovs/ovs-vswitchd.conf.db /ovs/bin/vswitch.ovsschema
• ovsdb-server /ovs/ovs-vswitchd.conf.db --remote=ptcp:6632:172.16.0.234 &
• ovs-vswitchd tcp:172.16.0.234:6632 --pidfile=pica8 --overwrite-pidfile > /var/log/ovs.log 2> /dev/null &

Figure 7 – Configure OVS - 1

In the following steps, we create the bridge, br0, and add 4 physical ports to it and set up its connection to a specific OpenFlow Controller (Floodlight in this case):

• ovs-vsctl  add-br br0 – set bridge br0 datapath_type=pica8
• ovs-vsctl  add-port br0 ge-1/1/1 – set interface ge-1/1/1 type=pica8
• ovs-vsctl  add-port br0 ge-1/1/2 – set interface ge-1/1/2 type=pica8
• ovs-vsctl  add-port br0 ge-1/1/3 – set interface ge-1/1/3 type=pica8
• ovs-vsctl  add-port br0 ge-1/1/4 – set interface ge-1/1/4 type=pica8
• ovs-vsctl  set-controller br0 tcp:172.16.0.179:6633

Figure 8 – Configure OVS - 2

We can verify the configuration by issuing:

• ovs-vsctl  show

Figure 9 – Show OVS Configuration

In the above pictures, it shows that the OpenFlow Controller has been defined. After the connection between Pica8 switch and OpenFlow Controller, the same command will show the connection status.