Example Use Cases

Lithium Overview ›  Use Cases ›  Consuming OpenDaylight ›  What’s New in Lithium

To best understand OpenDaylight, it is helpful to look at use cases to see the components in action.

One common use case explored here is providing network services for cloud data center platforms such as OpenStack. As shown in Figure 2 below a standard OpenStack cloud can be paired with OpenDaylight to offload network processing and provide enhanced services. This basic use case can be implemented after starting the core ODL controller by enabling the AAA, Neutron and OVSDB services. These services alone can support OpenStack by automating network virtualization and providing centralized control and management of distributed virtual switches and routers across the OpenStack cloud.

Figure 2: OpenDaylight Architecture with Example OpenStack Use Case

While the base set of services shown in figure 2 is sufficient to automate standard OpenStack network services,  many users would like to implement other additional features and services, and the ODL architecture makes this capability easy. The core services in ODL are based on Java Virtual Machines using the OSGi framework and Karaf containers. This enables ODL to run a small lean set of core services and only run additional code as needed to enable features only when they are used. Thanks to the OSGi framework and Karaf containers, these additional features can be spun up and down as needed without reboots and without risking the stability of the system.

As shown in Figure 2, additional features can be thought of as add-ons that the user can simply turn on and configure to deliver additional value-added capabilities. For example a user may desire to implement additional security and can add on the Unified Secure Channel features to encrypt communications, or enable the group-based policy and secure group tagging services to automate policy enforcement across the infrastructure. If a use case requires virtual firewall, load balancing or other L4-7 services users can enable the Service Function Chaining features to stitch together chains with far greater ease, flexibility and possibilities than with legacy traffic engineering.

An additional key value of the OpenDaylight platform is in its ability to bring together a vast array of network types under a common control and management framework. For example the base use case shown in Figure 2 is built using the OpenFlow plugin to control virtual switches on each OpenStack host. This could however be changed to control physical switches with OpenFlow, or could leverage other southbound plugins such as NETCONF, BGP/LS/PCEP or others to extend services across an array of different network device types.

This capability to connect a diverse array of networks to a common pool of services is a core capability of the ODL architecture. Networks are growing at an exponential rate, the mobile world has grown to now represent the majority of internet traffic while the Internet of Things stands poised to grow even larger. The core of any network is to connect users and devices together, and the flexibility of the ODL platform provides a common interface to efficiently bring users together and stay seamlessly connected to applications, regardless of how they connect to the network.

With 40 projects enabling hundreds of features in the Lithium release, the array of services and protocols that can be enabled is extensive, and new projects and capabilities are being added with every release.

For more information on use cases, please visit the Use Cases Page