The equipment for Southampton OpenFlow test network arrived at the start of January. Initially this will constitute 4 HP 2920 24G switches and 3 Dell servers. The first of these 3 servers called Lear, will run the control applications for the test network and provide the test networks connection out to the wider Internet. The other two servers, Goneril and Regan will be installed with XEN VM server so they can provide virtual machines for multiple concurrent experiments on the same network, much like is available on an OFELIA island.
Those with a knowledge of Shakespeare, may have gathered the naming convention for servers comes from the play King Lear. To that end, there are plans to an a third XEN VM server called Cordelia (King Lear’s youngest daughter).
Progress Report
As of 23rd January, all the servers and and switches have been racked in a server room at the University of Southampton. All the servers have also been installed with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server.
The process of installing OFELIA’s Control Framework (OCF) has begun on Lear. Using this provides the potential for the test network to be added as an OFELIA island at a later date. However, the installers for various OCF components need to be somewhat modified so they can support a standalone island.
XEN VM server has been installed and partially configured on Goneril. Final configuration of XEN to allow Lear to automatically create VMs using OCF, is dependent of completion of the installation of OCF components on Lear itself.
Next Tasks
- Complete the installation of OCF on Lear (the control server).
- Complete configuration on XEN on Goneril and Regan.
- Upgrading the firmware on the HP switches to the latest version that supports OpenFlow 1.3.
- Cabling the switches and servers together.
- Continue to update documentation for the test network
