Performance Evaluation of OpenStack Networking Technologies

Abstract

OpenStack is an open source cloud solution which aims at removing vendor locking by providing a virtualized environment in a production environment. OpenStack's networking module i.e. Neutron provides a centralized routing service, where L3 packets are redirected to a central network node. A single network node is incapable of handling overlapping IP addresses for multiple networks, which in turn, greatly decreases network bandwidth and throughput of production environments. This paper introduces two technologies that can alleviate the network performance issues as faced by Neutron. Furthermore, these two technologies namely OpenDaylight (ODL) and Distributed Virtual Routing (DVR) are then presented together with a set of benchmarks which showcase their performance in a production environment. The performance results show ODL and DVR out perform Neutron in every layer 3 case, making them as an upgrade for any traditional OpenStack based environment.