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Nodus is the Network controller designed based on the K8s controller framework and provides Open flow control based on OVN. This address OVN based Multiple Network creation, support Multiple network interfaces and support Virtual networking and Provider networkings.

Problem statement:

For 5 years, there has been quite the development in Cloud Native development to develop infrastructure to build and run the application that is fully automated, secure, flexible, performant, and resilient. This gives an opportunity in the evolution journey of the Monolith application to be decomposed into VMs and they are further decomposed into Microservices. This led to the path of Kubernetes to become a de-facto orchestration engine that facilitates this journey. During these courses, it was identified that Kubernetes networking and Container Networking are not addressing the need for Network evolutions in multiples cases starting from creating and managing the network infrastructure and automating it, and in general, it lacks Software Defined Networking (SDN) concepts such as programmable networks, decoupling the control and data planes, and scalability. Kubernetes networking has evolved so far only for the data ware centric cloud networking and it lacks network distribution to be suitable for Edge Cloud Networking

Nodus is the network controller in Kubernetes that addresses the need for Software Defined Networking that simplifies the network operations, builds programmable networks for greater flexibility and scalability.

Application transformation is one of the major objectives in the edge computing in the cloud-native evolution. Taking a PNF(Physical Network Function) or a VNF(Virtual Network Functions) to be ready to deploy in the edge is as challenging because the NFs(Network Functions) are composited into smaller microservices and these microservers will be deployed in the multiple edge location. Controlling the network traffics such as both control plane and data plane traffics in the scenarios is required to achieve low latency and multiple clusters networking

Solution:

Architecture:

Nodus is a network controller and is designed to deliver Cloud-Native programmable networks that enable centralized control and network policy enforcement across physical and virtual networks.

Nodus support Kubernetes Networking, Open Virtual Network (OVN) based networking features to support virtual switching, virtual network abstractions and Service Function chaining. Nodus is planned to deliver features on Network Multi-tenancy, Network OoS, Network based Multicore Utilization, and TCFlower based network access.

Adding Multi cluster networking is a challenging requirement for Edge networking in the cloud-native world. As Kubernetes delegates all the networking features to CNI(Container Network Interfaces), and right now we have 16+ CNI types that offer various networking features starting from localhost to BGP networking. Having a single network controller for the Multiple Cluster within an edge and also across geo-distributed edge location is a requirement to create a virtual network, provider networks across the edges, and apply the same tuning parameter for the network resources in the edges.

As edge locations are as small as 16 GB RAM, we don't have the options to run multiple network controller in edge, we required to have single network controller that could handle all the network requirement of the edge.

• Kubelets invoke the CNI as a process at each time for the pod creation and deletion. Having more complex in the CNI binary will increase the pod creation and deletion time. we are required to have thin shim CNI layers and more complex to be moved to the network controller.  Having a CNI controller as a process along with Kubelet is the ideal solution, but this requires a serious change in Kubernetes networking.
• CNI is complexing as they are forced to multiple items features within them. 
• Having a proxy CNI that calls another network controllers/CNI to invoke multiple network interfaces is forcing to having multiple read and write operation to store the post and pre-state of the network creation, and this invokes multiple CNIs to achieve a simple networking configuration such as bonding and Qos. Are even to apply the SFCs mechanism
• CNI framework also doesn't address the on-fly changing in the networking such as route change, overcome the network failovers or to apply SFCs to meet the network demands on the fly.

Nodus is designed to address all the challenges. We designed the very thin layer of CNI shim that development to maintain the CNI framework and all the networking complexity such as Multiple networking, handling the infinite network resouces and finite network resources are moved in a single network controllerNodus is decomposed into 4 microservices, Network Function (NFN) Operators, Network Function (NFN) agent, OVN Control plane, and OVN controller.

Network Function (NFN) Operator is a Kubernetes Operator framework that hosts multiple Kubernetes Custom resource definition controller, and Kubernetes core API watchers to monitor and predicate the events to synchronize the network operations. It gets the input from the user, and it acts as an orchestration engine for Networking to create, manage virtual and physical network support for both VLAN and direct networking, Service Function chaining using OVN control plane and NFN agent.

Network Function (NFN) agent is a Kubernetes daemon set to get the command from Network Function (NFN) operator to do network plumbing works such as network configuration and managing the workloads network namespace in each host using Container Network Interfaces specs.

OVN control-plane hosts all the OVN Northbound API as the microservices and the OVN controller host all the OVN Southbound API and OVS virtual switch as the microservices. OVN control plane gets the network abstraction configuration from NFN operators and translates network configuration into Openflow to implement distributed logical switches, Access control lists for network policy implementations, Service function chaining, and distributed virtual routers.

Features:

InFinite Network Resources:

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Configuration

Presentation:

Updated 05/18/2022

LFN Developer Forum - January 13th 2022

Open vSwitch and OVN 2021 Fall conference - Dec 7th & 8th 2021

October 11th 2021

Nodus slide deck:

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