Introduction; About The Hpe Van Sdn Controller; The Hpe Sdn Ecosystem - HP HPE VAN SDN Controller 2.7 Administrator's Manual

1 Introduction

This document describes the configuration and management of the HPE VAN SDN Controller
in standalone and team modes.

About the HPE VAN SDN Controller

The HPE VAN SDN Controller provides a unified control point in an OpenFlow-enabled network,
simplifying management, provisioning, and orchestration and enabling delivery of a new generation
of application-based network services.
In the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture, the control
and data planes of the network are decoupled from each other, centralizing network intelligence
and abstracting the underlying network infrastructure from applications. Controller software
manages forwarding behavior for physical and virtual switches under its control via the
industry-standard OpenFlow protocol. Network ports, links, and topologies are all directly visible,
enabling centralized policy administration and more effective path selection based on a dynamic,
global view of the network. This dramatically simplifies the orchestration of multi-tenant
environments and the enforcement of network policy for both mobile clients and servers.
The HPE VAN SDN Controller is designed to operate in a variety of computing environments,
including campus, data center, service provider, private cloud, and public cloud. The HPE VAN
SDN Controller features:
An enterprise-class platform for the delivery of a broad range of network innovations
An extensible, scalable, and resilient controller architecture
Compliance with OpenFlow 1.0 and 1.3 protocols
Support for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and H3C OpenFlow-enabled switches
Secure authentication using a local or remote Keystone server
Controller teaming for distributed platform High Availability (HA)
Embedded applications that provide common network services
Open APIs enable SDN application developers to deliver innovative solutions that dynamically
link business requirements to network infrastructure using either custom Java programs or
general-purpose RESTful control interfaces, including functions to extend the controller
REST API and UI.
Integration with HPE Intelligent Management Center (IMC). HPE IMC provides full controller
application life cycle management and monitoring, enhanced reporting and SDN network
visualization.

The HPE SDN ecosystem

SDN architecture separates the network control plane from the forwarding hardware on network
devices. Control can then be centralized, while forwarding remains distributed. SDN is based on
OpenFlow, which is a standards-based protocol allowing for a centralized-control plane in a
separate device (the controller).
OpenFlow is managed by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). By separating the control
plane from the forwarding plane, SDN makes it possible for the network status and capabilities
to be exposed directly to the business service layer, so that business systems can request
services from the network directly. SDN applications thus provide higher level application direction
to the SDN controller. And freed from the control function, the forwarding plane can then provide
optimized packet processing at very high speeds.
The HPE VAN SDN Controller is the central building block of the HPE SDN ecosystem and
creates a platform for application development.
10 Introduction