Open Networking Summit 2017

All major networking vendors have proprietary datacenter fabric products. We present an open-source fabric built with white-boxes & SDN, performing L2 switching at ToRs and L3 routing between racks. Being SDN based, the fabric avoids the use of traditional switch/router networking protocols, but allows the entire fabric to be presented as a single BGP/OSPF speaking router to the outside world. We explain why this feature is a big advantage in several networking contexts. This unique construction does however present challenges when designing for high-availability. As a result, we discuss design decisions made for achieving system-HA, including N-way controller redundancy, dual-Quagga in active-active mode, dual-ToRs with pair-links, dual-uplinks to the same spine, and dual-homed servers and other attached equipment. We discuss the upcoming release of this work and potential deployments.