OVN

OVN is a network virtualization platform that separates the physical network topology from the logical one.^[2] Users are able to connect virtual and physical interfaces with logical switches and routers, regardless of the underlying physical topology. Users are also able to define security policies and load-balancing to these logical instances. OVN uses Open vSwitch for its switching fabric and uses tunnels to provide the logical/physical separation.

Open source bindings for OVN are available for a number of platforms, such as OpenStack^[3] and Kubernetes.^[4] OVN is the software-defined networking (SDN) platform used in a number of Red Hat products, including Red Hat Virtualization,^[5] OpenStack,^[6] and OpenShift.^[7]

OVN is written in platform-independent C language, which provides easy portability to various environments. The source code is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

As of May 2018, features provided by OVN include the following:

• Logical switches
• Flexible L2/L3/L4 security policies
• Distributed logical IPv4 and IPv6 routers
• Native support for network address translation (NAT), load-balancing, and DHCP
• L2 and L3 gateways