ovn-controller(8) OVN Manual ovn-controller(8)
NAME
ovn-controller - Open Virtual Network local controller
SYNOPSIS
ovn-controller [options] [ovs-database]
DESCRIPTION
ovn-controller is the local controller daemon for OVN, the Open Virtual
Network. It connects up to the OVN Southbound database (see ovn-sb(5))
over the OVSDB protocol, and down to the Open vSwitch database (see
ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5)) over the OVSDB protocol and to ovs-vswitchd(8)
via OpenFlow. Each hypervisor and software gateway in an OVN deployment
runs its own independent copy of ovn-controller; thus, ovn-controller’s
downward connections are machine-local and do not run over a physical
network.
ACL LOGGING
ACL log messages are logged through ovn-controller’s logging mechanism.
ACL log entries have the module acl_log at log level info. Configuring
logging is described below in the Logging Options section.
OPTIONS
Daemon Options
--pidfile[=pidfile]
Causes a file (by default, program.pid) to be created indicating
the PID of the running process. If the pidfile argument is not
specified, or if it does not begin with /, then it is created in
.
If --pidfile is not specified, no pidfile is created.
--overwrite-pidfile
By default, when --pidfile is specified and the specified pid‐
file already exists and is locked by a running process, the dae‐
mon refuses to start. Specify --overwrite-pidfile to cause it to
instead overwrite the pidfile.
When --pidfile is not specified, this option has no effect.
--detach
Runs this program as a background process. The process forks,
and in the child it starts a new session, closes the standard
file descriptors (which has the side effect of disabling logging
to the console), and changes its current directory to the root
(unless --no-chdir is specified). After the child completes its
initialization, the parent exits.
--monitor
Creates an additional process to monitor this program. If it
dies due to a signal that indicates a programming error (SIGA‐‐
BRT, SIGALRM, SIGBUS, SIGFPE, SIGILL, SIGPIPE, SIGSEGV, SIGXCPU,
or SIGXFSZ) then the monitor process starts a new copy of it. If
the daemon dies or exits for another reason, the monitor process
exits.
This option is normally used with --detach, but it also func‐
tions without it.
--no-chdir
By default, when --detach is specified, the daemon changes its
current working directory to the root directory after it de‐
taches. Otherwise, invoking the daemon from a carelessly chosen
directory would prevent the administrator from unmounting the
file system that holds that directory.
Specifying --no-chdir suppresses this behavior, preventing the
daemon from changing its current working directory. This may be
useful for collecting core files, since it is common behavior to
write core dumps into the current working directory and the root
directory is not a good directory to use.
This option has no effect when --detach is not specified.
--no-self-confinement
By default this daemon will try to self-confine itself to work
with files under well-known directories determined at build
time. It is better to stick with this default behavior and not
to use this flag unless some other Access Control is used to
confine daemon. Note that in contrast to other access control
implementations that are typically enforced from kernel-space
(e.g. DAC or MAC), self-confinement is imposed from the user-
space daemon itself and hence should not be considered as a full
confinement strategy, but instead should be viewed as an addi‐
tional layer of security.
--user=user:group
Causes this program to run as a different user specified in
user:group, thus dropping most of the root privileges. Short
forms user and :group are also allowed, with current user or
group assumed, respectively. Only daemons started by the root
user accepts this argument.
On Linux, daemons will be granted CAP_IPC_LOCK and
CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICES before dropping root privileges. Daemons
that interact with a datapath, such as ovs-vswitchd, will be
granted three additional capabilities, namely CAP_NET_ADMIN,
CAP_NET_BROADCAST and CAP_NET_RAW. The capability change will
apply even if the new user is root.
Logging Options
-v[spec]
--verbose=[spec]
Sets logging levels. Without any spec, sets the log level for
every module and destination to dbg. Otherwise, spec is a list of
words separated by spaces or commas or colons, up to one from each
category below:
• A valid module name, as displayed by the vlog/list command
on ovs-appctl(8), limits the log level change to the speci‐
fied module.
• syslog, console, or file, to limit the log level change to
only to the system log, to the console, or to a file, re‐
spectively. (If --detach is specified, the daemon closes
its standard file descriptors, so logging to the console
will have no effect.)
• off, emer, err, warn, info, or dbg, to control the log
level. Messages of the given severity or higher will be
logged, and messages of lower severity will be filtered
out. off filters out all messages. See ovs-appctl(8) for a
definition of each log level.
Case is not significant within spec.
Regardless of the log levels set for file, logging to a file will
not take place unless --log-file is also specified (see below).
For compatibility with older versions of OVS, any is accepted as a
word but has no effect.
-v
--verbose
Sets the maximum logging verbosity level, equivalent to --ver‐‐
bose=dbg.
-vPATTERN:destination:pattern
--verbose=PATTERN:destination:pattern
Sets the log pattern for destination to pattern. Refer to ovs-ap‐‐
pctl(8) for a description of the valid syntax for pattern.
-vFACILITY:facility
--verbose=FACILITY:facility
Sets the RFC5424 facility of the log message. facility can be one
of kern, user, mail, daemon, auth, syslog, lpr, news, uucp, clock,
ftp, ntp, audit, alert, clock2, local0, local1, local2, local3,
local4, local5, local6 or local7. If this option is not specified,
daemon is used as the default for the local system syslog and lo‐‐
cal0 is used while sending a message to the target provided via
the --syslog-target option.
--log-file[=file]
Enables logging to a file. If file is specified, then it is used
as the exact name for the log file. The default log file name used
if file is omitted is /usr/local/var/log/ovn/program.log.
--syslog-target=host:port
Send syslog messages to UDP port on host, in addition to the sys‐
tem syslog. The host must be a numerical IP address, not a host‐
name.
--syslog-method=method
Specify method as how syslog messages should be sent to syslog
daemon. The following forms are supported:
• libc, to use the libc syslog() function. Downside of using
this options is that libc adds fixed prefix to every mes‐
sage before it is actually sent to the syslog daemon over
/dev/log UNIX domain socket.
• unix:file, to use a UNIX domain socket directly. It is pos‐
sible to specify arbitrary message format with this option.
However, rsyslogd 8.9 and older versions use hard coded
parser function anyway that limits UNIX domain socket use.
If you want to use arbitrary message format with older
rsyslogd versions, then use UDP socket to localhost IP ad‐
dress instead.
• udp:ip:port, to use a UDP socket. With this method it is
possible to use arbitrary message format also with older
rsyslogd. When sending syslog messages over UDP socket ex‐
tra precaution needs to be taken into account, for example,
syslog daemon needs to be configured to listen on the spec‐
ified UDP port, accidental iptables rules could be inter‐
fering with local syslog traffic and there are some secu‐
rity considerations that apply to UDP sockets, but do not
apply to UNIX domain sockets.
• null, to discard all messages logged to syslog.
The default is taken from the OVS_SYSLOG_METHOD environment vari‐
able; if it is unset, the default is libc.
PKI Options
PKI configuration is required in order to use SSL/TLS for the connec‐
tions to the Northbound and Southbound databases.
-p privkey.pem
--private-key=privkey.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as
identity for outgoing SSL/TLS connections.
-c cert.pem
--certificate=cert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing a certificate that certi‐
fies the private key specified on -p or --private-key to be
trustworthy. The certificate must be signed by the certifi‐
cate authority (CA) that the peer in SSL/TLS connections
will use to verify it.
-C cacert.pem
--ca-cert=cacert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the CA certificate for ver‐
ifying certificates presented to this program by SSL/TLS
peers. (This may be the same certificate that SSL/TLS peers
use to verify the certificate specified on -c or --certifi‐‐
cate, or it may be a different one, depending on the PKI
design in use.)
-C none
--ca-cert=none
Disables verification of certificates presented by SSL/TLS
peers. This introduces a security risk, because it means
that certificates cannot be verified to be those of known
trusted hosts.
--ssl-server-name=servername
Specifies the server name to use for TLS Server Name Indi‐
cation (SNI). By default, the hostname from the connection
string is used for SNI. This option allows overriding the
SNI hostname, which is useful when connecting through prox‐
ies or service meshes where the connection endpoint differs
from the intended server name.
--bootstrap-ca-cert=cacert.pem
When cacert.pem exists, this option has the same effect
as -C or --ca-cert. If it does not exist, then the exe‐
cutable will attempt to obtain the CA certificate from
the SSL/TLS peer on its first SSL/TLS connection and save
it to the named PEM file. If it is successful, it will
immediately drop the connection and reconnect, and from
then on all SSL/TLS connections must be authenticated by
a certificate signed by the CA certificate thus obtained.
This option exposes the SSL/TLS connection to a man-in-
the-middle attack obtaining the initial CA certificate,
but it may be useful for bootstrapping.
This option is only useful if the SSL/TLS peer sends its
CA certificate as part of the SSL/TLS certificate chain.
SSL/TLS protocols do not require the server to send the
CA certificate.
This option is mutually exclusive with -C and --ca-cert.
--peer-ca-cert=peer-cacert.pem
Specifies a PEM file that contains one or more additional
certificates to send to SSL/TLS peers. peer-cacert.pem
should be the CA certificate used to sign the program’s
own certificate, that is, the certificate specified on -c
or --certificate. If the program’s certificate is self-
signed, then --certificate and --peer-ca-cert should
specify the same file.
This option is not useful in normal operation, because
the SSL/TLS peer must already have the CA certificate for
the peer to have any confidence in the program’s iden‐
tity. However, this offers a way for a new installation
to bootstrap the CA certificate on its first SSL/TLS con‐
nection.
Other Options
--unixctl=socket
Sets the name of the control socket on which program listens for
runtime management commands (see RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS,
below). If socket does not begin with /, it is interpreted as
relative to . If --unixctl is not used at all, the default
socket is /program.pid.ctl, where pid is program’s process ID.
Specifying none for socket disables the control socket feature.
-n chassis
--chassis=chassis
Use chassis as the chassis name. This takes precedence over
the name in the system-id-override file and exter‐‐
nal_ids:system-id in the local Open vSwitch database.
--dump-inc-proc-graph[=node]
Dump the incremental processing engine graph in DOT format
to stdout and then exit. If node is specified, only the
subgraph rooted at that engine node is printed.
-h
--help
Prints a brief help message to the console.
-V
--version
Prints version information to the console.
CONFIGURATION
ovn-controller retrieves most of its configuration information from the
local Open vSwitch’s ovsdb-server instance. The default location is
db.sock in the local Open vSwitch’s "run" directory. It may be overrid‐
den by specifying the ovs-database argument as an OVSDB active or pas‐
sive connection method, as described in ovsdb(7).
ovn-controller assumes it gets configuration information from the fol‐
lowing keys in the Open_vSwitch table of the local OVS instance:
external_ids:system-id
The chassis name to use in the Chassis table. Changing
the system-id while ovn-controller is running is not di‐
rectly supported. Users have two options: either first
gracefully stop ovn-controller or manually delete the
stale Chassis and Chassis_Private records after changing
the system-id. Note that the chassis name can also be
provided via the system-id-override file in the local OVN
"etc" directory or via the -n command-line option. The
following precedence is used: first, the command-line op‐
tion is read; if not present, the system-id-override file
is read; if not present, then the name configured in the
database is used.
external_ids:hostname
The hostname to use in the Chassis table.
external_ids:ovn-bridge
The integration bridge to which logical ports are at‐
tached. The default is br-int. If this bridge does not
exist when ovn-controller starts, it will be created au‐
tomatically with the default configuration suggested in
ovn-architecture(7). When more than one controllers are
running on the same host, external_ids:ovn-bridge-CHAS‐‐
SIS_NAME should be set for each of them, pointing to a
unique bridge. This is required to avoid controllers
stepping on each others’ feet.
external_ids:ovn-bridge-datapath-type
This configuration is optional. If set, then the datapath
type of the integration bridge will be set to the config‐
ured value. If this option is not set, then ovn-con‐‐
troller will not modify the existing datapath-type of the
integration bridge.
external_ids:ovn-remote
The OVN database that this system should connect to for
its configuration, in one of the same forms documented
above for the ovs-database.
external_ids:ovn-monitor-all
A boolean value that tells if ovn-controller should moni‐
tor all records of tables in the OVN_Southbound. If this
option is set to false, ovn-controller will conditionally
monitor only the records that are needed for the local
chassis.
It is more efficient to set it to true in use cases where
the chassis would anyway need to monitor most of the
records in the OVN_Southbound database, which would save
the overhead of conditions processing, especially for
server side. Typically, set it to true for environments
where all workloads need to be reachable from each other.
NOTE: for efficiency and scalability in common scenarios
ovn-controller unconditionally monitors all sub-ports
(ports with parent_port set) regardless of the ovn-moni‐‐
tor-all value.
Default value is false.
external_ids:ovn-remote-probe-interval
The inactivity probe interval of the connection to the
OVN database, in milliseconds. If the value is zero, it
disables the connection keepalive feature.
If the value is nonzero, then it will be forced to a
value of at least 1000 ms.
external_ids:ovn-encap-type
The encapsulation type that a chassis should use to con‐
nect to this node. Multiple encapsulation types may be
specified with a comma-separated list. Each listed encap‐
sulation type will be paired with ovn-encap-ip.
Supported tunnel types for connecting hypervisors and
gateways are geneve and vxlan.
Due to the limited amount of metadata in vxlan, the capa‐
bilities and performance of connected gateways and hyper‐
visors will be reduced versus other tunnel formats.
external_ids:ovn-encap-ip
The IP address that a chassis should use to connect to
this node using encapsulation types specified by exter‐‐
nal_ids:ovn-encap-type. Multiple encapsulation IPs may be
specified with a comma-separated list.
In scenarios where multiple encapsulation IPs are
present, distinct tunnels are established for each remote
chassis. These tunnels are differentiated by setting
unique options:local_ip and options:remote_ip values in
the tunnel interface. When transmitting a packet to a re‐
mote chassis, the selection of local_ip is guided by the
Interface:external_ids:encap-ip from the local OVSDB,
corresponding to the VIF originating the packet, if spec‐
ified. The Interface:external_ids:encap-ip setting of the
VIF is also populated to the Port_Binding table in the
OVN SB database via the encap column. Consequently, when
a remote chassis needs to send a packet to a port-binding
associated with this VIF, it utilizes the tunnel with the
appropriate options:remote_ip that matches the ip in
Port_Binding:encap. This mechanism is particularly bene‐
ficial for chassis with multiple physical interfaces des‐
ignated for tunneling, where each interface is optimized
for handling specific traffic associated with particular
VIFs.
external_ids:ovn-encap-ip-default
When ovn-encap-ip contains multiple IPs, this field indi‐
cates the default one.
external_ids:ovn-encap-df_default
indicates the DF flag handling of the encapulation. Set
to true to set the DF flag for new data paths or false to
clear the DF flag.
external_ids:ovn-enable-flow-based-tunnels
The boolean flag indicates if ovn-controller should use
flow-based tunnels instead of port-based tunnels for
overlay network connectivity. Default value is false.
Port-based tunnels (default mode) create a dedicated tun‐
nel port for each combination of remote chassis and local
encap IP, while Flow-based tunnels create a single shared
tunnel port for each tunnel type, and use OpenFlow
set_field actions to dynamically set tunnel source and
destination IP addresses per packet.
This feature is experimental and is disabled by default.
There are some known limitations to the feature:
• IPSec is not supported.
• BFD between tunnel endpoints is not supported,
thus HA chassis (e.g. for Distributed Gateway Port
redundancy) is not supported.
external_ids:ovn-bridge-mappings
A list of key-value pairs that map a physical network
name to a local ovs bridge that provides connectivity to
that network. An example value mapping two physical net‐
work names to two ovs bridges would be: phys‐‐
net1:br-eth0,physnet2:br-eth1.
external_ids:ovn-encap-csum
ovn-encap-csum indicates that encapsulation checksums can
be transmitted and received with reasonable performance.
It is a hint to senders transmitting data to this chassis
that they should use checksums to protect OVN metadata.
Set to true to enable or false to disable. Depending on
the capabilities of the network interface card, enabling
encapsulation checksum may incur performance loss. In
such cases, encapsulation checksums can be disabled.
external_ids:ovn-encap-tos
ovn-encap-tos indicates the value to be applied to OVN
tunnel interface’s option:tos as specified in the
Open_vSwitch database Interface table. Please refer to
Open VSwitch Manual for details.
external_ids:ovn-cms-options
A list of options that will be consumed by the CMS Plugin
and which specific to this particular chassis. An example
would be: cms_option1,cms_option2:foo.
external_ids:ovn-transport-zones
The transport zone(s) that this chassis belongs to.
Transport zones is a way to group different chassis so
that tunnels are only formed between members of the same
group(s). Multiple transport zones may be specified with
a comma-separated list. For example: tz1,tz2,tz3.
If not set, the Chassis will be considered part of a de‐
fault transport zone.
external_ids:ovn-chassis-mac-mappings
A list of key-value pairs that map a chassis specific mac
to a physical network name. An example value mapping two
chassis macs to two physical network names would be:
physnet1:aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff,physnet2:a1:b2:c3:d4:e5:f6.
These are the macs that ovn-controller will replace a
router port mac with, if packet is going from a distrib‐
uted router port on vlan type logical switch.
external_ids:ovn-is-interconn
The boolean flag indicates if the chassis is used as an
interconnection gateway.
external_ids:ovn-match-northd-version
The boolean flag indicates if ovn-controller needs to
check ovn-northd version. If this flag is set to true and
the ovn-northd’’s version (reported in the Southbound
database) doesn’t match with the ovn-controller’’s inter‐
nal version, then it will stop processing the southbound
and local Open vSwitch database changes. The default
value is considered false if this option is not defined.
external_ids:ovn-enable-lflow-cache
The boolean flag indicates if ovn-controller should en‐
able/disable the logical flow in-memory cache it uses
when processing Southbound database logical flow changes.
By default caching is enabled.
external_ids:ovn-limit-lflow-cache
When used, this configuration value determines the maxi‐
mum number of logical flow cache entries ovn-controller
may create when the logical flow cache is enabled. By de‐
fault the size of the cache is unlimited.
external_ids:ovn-memlimit-lflow-cache-kb
When used, this configuration value determines the maxi‐
mum size of the logical flow cache (in KB) ovn-controller
may create when the logical flow cache is enabled. By de‐
fault the size of the cache is unlimited.
external_ids:ovn-trim-limit-lflow-cache
When used, this configuration value sets the minimum num‐
ber of entries in the logical flow cache starting with
which automatic memory trimming is performed. By default
this is set to 10000 entries.
external_ids:ovn-trim-wmark-perc-lflow-cache
When used, this configuration value sets the percentage
from the high watermark number of entries in the logical
flow cache under which automatic memory trimming is per‐
formed. E.g., if the trim watermark percentage is set to
50%, automatic memory trimming happens only when the num‐
ber of entries in the logical flow cache gets reduced to
less than half of the last measured high watermark. By
default this is set to 50.
external_ids:ovn-trim-timeout-ms
When used, this configuration value specifies the time,
in milliseconds, since the last logical flow cache opera‐
tion after which ovn-controller performs memory trimming
regardless of how many entries there are in the cache. By
default this is set to 30000 (30 seconds).
external_ids:garp-max-timeout-sec
When used, this configuration value specifies the maximum
timeout (in seconds) between two consecutive GARP packets
sent by ovn-controller. ovn-controller by default sends
just 4 GARP packets with an exponential backoff timeout.
Setting external_ids:garp-max-timeout-sec allows to cap
for the exponential backoff used by ovn-controller to
send GARPs packets.
external_ids:arp-nd-max-timeout-sec
When used, this configuration value specifies the maximum
timeout (in seconds) between two consecutive ARP/ND pack‐
ets sent by ovn-controller to resolve ECMP nexthop mac
address. ovn-controller by default continuously sends
ARP/ND packets. Setting external_ids:arp-nd-max-time‐‐
out-sec allows to cap for the exponential backoff used by
ovn-controller
to send ARPs/NDs packets.
external_ids:ovn-bridge-remote
Connection to the OVN management bridge in OvS. It de‐
faults to unix:br-int.mgmt when not specified.
external_ids:ovn-bridge-remote-probe-interval
The inactivity probe interval of the connection to the
OVN management bridge, in milliseconds. It defaults to
zero. If the value is zero, it disables the inactivity
probe.
external_ids:dynamic-routing-port-mapping
This setting works together with the Northbound dynamic-
routing-port-name option on Logical_Router_Ports. See the
ovn-nb(5) for more details.
Note: When using the routing-protocol-redirect option
with veth pairs on Linux systems, this mapping may not be
necessary as ovn-controller can automatically discover
the veth peer interface name. See the routing-proto‐‐
col-redirect option documentation in ovn-nb(5) for de‐
tails.
external_ids:ovn-cleanup-on-exit
A boolean value that controls whether ovn-controller re‐
leases this chassis’s logical port bindings and removes
its Chassis, Chassis_Private, Encap, and IGMP_Group rows
when it terminates through the exit runtime command. The
default value is true.
If set to false, cleanup is skipped as if exit --restart
had been used. The --restart argument always skips
cleanup, regardless of this setting. The chassis-specific
form, external_ids:ovn-cleanup-on-exit-[chassis], is also
supported as described below.
external_ids:ovn-evpn-vxlan-ports
Comma separated list of UDP ports used as a destination
port for the EVPN tunnels created by this ovn-controller.
external_ids:ovn-evpn-local-ip
IP address list used as a source addresses for the EVPN
traffic leaving this OVN setup. The ovn-evpn-local-ip can
be specified by the CMS according to the following syn‐
tax: external_ids:ovn-evpn-local-ip=vni0-IPv4,vni1-IPv4,
vni1-IPv6,IPv4,IPv6, where if no VNI value is specified,
OVN will use the provided IP as default IP.
Most of configuration options listed above can also be set for a par‐
ticular chassis name (see external_ids:system-id for more informa‐
tion). This can be achieved by setting external_ids:option-[chassis]
instead of external_ids:option. For example, set external_ids:ovn-en‐‐
cap-ip-otherhv to use a particular IP address for the controller in‐
stance named otherhv. Name specific configuration options always over‐
ride any global options set in the database.
Chassis-specific configuration options in the database plus the ability
to configure the chassis name to use via the system-id-override file or
command line allows to run multiple ovn-controller instances with
unique chassis names on the same host using the same vswitchd instance.
This may be useful when running a hybrid setup with more than one CMS
managing ports on the host, or to use different datapath types on the
same host. In order to support stateful features (ACLs, LBs, NAT) in
multiple OVN deployments co-hosted on the same chassis, CMS also need
to separate conntrack zone ranges between the co-hosted ovn-controllers
through the external_ids:ct-zone-range configuration described in up‐
coming sections.
ovn-controller reads the following values from the Open_vSwitch data‐
base of the local OVS instance:
datapath-type from Bridge table
This value is read from local OVS integration bridge row
of Bridge table and populated in other_config:datapath-
type of the Chassis table in the OVN_Southbound database.
iface-types from Open_vSwitch table
This value is populated in other_config:iface-types of
the Chassis table in the OVN_Southbound database.
private_key, certificate, ca_cert, and bootstrap_ca_cert from
SSL table
These values provide the SSL/TLS configuration used for
connecting to the OVN southbound database server when an
SSL/TLS connection type is configured via exter‐‐
nal_ids:ovn-remote. Note that this SSL/TLS configuration
can also be provided via command-line options, the con‐
figuration in the database takes precedence if both are
present.
OPEN VSWITCH DATABASE USAGE
ovn-controller uses a number of external_ids keys in the Open vSwitch
database to keep track of ports and interfaces. For proper operation,
users should not change or clear these keys:
external_ids:ovn-chassis-id in the Port table
The presence of this key identifies a tunnel port within
the integration bridge as one created by ovn-controller
to reach a remote chassis. Its value is the chassis ID of
the remote chassis.
external_ids:ct-zone-range in the Open_vSwitch table
The presence of this key identifies a minimum and maximum
values for ct-zone ids dynamically selected by ovn-con‐
troller (boundaries are included in the range). Minimum
value is 1 while maximum value is 65535.
external_ids:ct-zone-* in the Bridge table
Logical ports and gateway routers are assigned a connec‐
tion tracking zone by ovn-controller for stateful ser‐
vices. To keep state across restarts of ovn-controller,
these keys are stored in the integration bridge’s Bridge
table. The name contains a prefix of ct-zone- followed by
the name of the logical port or gateway router’s zone
key. The value for this key identifies the zone used for
this port.
external_ids:ovn-localnet-port in the Port table
The presence of this key identifies a patch port as one
created by ovn-controller to connect the integration
bridge and another bridge to implement a localnet logical
port. Its value is the name of the logical port with type
set to localnet that the port implements. See exter‐‐
nal_ids:ovn-bridge-mappings, above, for more information.
Each localnet logical port is implemented as a pair of
patch ports, one in the integration bridge, one in a dif‐
ferent bridge, with the same external_ids:ovn-local‐‐
net-port value.
external_ids:ovn-l2gateway-port in the Port table
The presence of this key identifies a patch port as one
created by ovn-controller to connect the integration
bridge and another bridge to implement a l2gateway logi‐
cal port. Its value is the name of the logical port with
type set to l2gateway that the port implements. See ex‐‐
ternal_ids:ovn-bridge-mappings, above, for more informa‐
tion.
Each l2gateway logical port is implemented as a pair of
patch ports, one in the integration bridge, one in a dif‐
ferent bridge, with the same external_ids:ovn-l2gate‐‐
way-port value.
external_ids:ovn-l3gateway-port in the Port table
Older versions of ovn-controller used this key on patch
ports. Current versions do not create or use such ports.
During normal operation after the startup delay, they re‐
move obsolete patch-port pairs discovered through a port
with this key on the integration bridge.
external_ids:ovn-logical-patch-port in the Port table
Older versions of ovn-controller used this key on patch
ports. Current versions do not create or use such ports.
During normal operation after the startup delay, they re‐
move obsolete patch-port pairs discovered through a port
with this key on the integration bridge.
external_ids:ovn-startup-ts in the Bridge table
This key represents the timestamp (in milliseconds) at
which ovn-controller process was started.
external_ids:ovn-nb-cfg in the Bridge table
This key represents the last known OVN_South‐‐
bound.SB_Global.nb_cfg value for which all flows have
been successfully installed in OVS.
external_ids:ovn-nb-cfg-ts in the Bridge table
This key represents the timestamp (in milliseconds) of
the last known OVN_Southbound.SB_Global.nb_cfg value for
which all flows have been successfully installed in OVS.
external_ids:ovn-nb-cfg-sb-ts in the Bridge table
This key records the value of OVN_South‐‐
bound.SB_Global.nb_cfg_timestamp that corresponded to the
ovn-nb-cfg generation for which all flows have been suc‐
cessfully installed in OVS. It is the wall-clock time (in
milliseconds since the Unix epoch) at which ovn-northd
wrote that nb_cfg value to the Southbound database. The
difference between this timestamp and ovn-nb-cfg-ts gives
the per-chassis end-to-end propagation latency for that
configuration generation. The key is absent when no time‐
stamp is available (e.g. when NB_Global.options:en‐‐
able_chassis_nb_cfg_update is false).
external_ids:ovn-installed and external_ids:ovn-installed-ts in
the Interface table
This key is set after all openflow operations correspond‐
ing to the OVS interface have been processed by ovs-
vswitchd. At the same time a timestamp, in milliseconds
since the epoch, is stored in external_ids:ovn-in‐‐
stalled-ts.
external_ids:ovn-evpn-tunnel in the Port and Interface table
Presence of this key indicates that the Port/Interface
was created by ovn-controller to be used as tunnel port
for EVPN traffic.
OVN SOUTHBOUND DATABASE USAGE
ovn-controller reads from much of the OVN_Southbound database to guide
its operation. ovn-controller also writes to the following tables:
Chassis
ovn-controller creates and maintains the row that repre‐
sents its chassis. It writes the name, hostname, encaps,
other_config, and transport_zones columns. It removes the
row during exit cleanup.
Chassis_Private
ovn-controller creates and maintains the private row for
its chassis. It writes the name, chassis, nb_cfg, and
nb_cfg_timestamp columns. It removes the row during exit
cleanup.
Encap ovn-controller creates and maintains rows for the tunnel
encapsulations by which its chassis can be reached. It
writes the type, ip, options, and chassis_name columns.
These non-root rows are removed with their owning Chassis
row during exit cleanup.
Port_Binding
ovn-controller claims and releases logical ports by up‐
dating the chassis and additional_chassis columns. It
also updates the up, encap, additional_encap, vir‐‐
tual_parent, and options columns when required by the
corresponding port behavior. Exit cleanup releases bind‐
ings owned by this chassis.
MAC_Binding
ovn-controller creates and updates rows as instructed by
put_arp and put_nd logical actions, while simulating
GARPs on peer router datapaths, and when synchronizing
EVPN neighbors. It also refreshes timestamps for active
bindings. It writes the logical_port, ip, mac, datapath,
and timestamp columns. These changes persist beyond the
lifetime of ovn-controller, except that EVPN-synchronized
rows are removed when their corresponding neighbors be‐
come stale.
Controller_Event
ovn-controller inserts events generated by controller ac‐
tions. It writes the event_type, event_info, chassis, and
seq_num columns.
IGMP_Group
ovn-controller creates, updates, and removes rows for
multicast groups learned on its chassis. It writes the
address, protocol, datapath, chassis, ports, and chas‐‐
sis_name columns. It removes rows owned by this chassis
during exit cleanup.
Service_Monitor
ovn-controller writes the status column with the result
of each service health check. See ovn-sb(5) for the sta‐
tus values.
BFD ovn-controller writes the status column as BFD sessions
change state. See ovn-sb(5) for the state values.
FDB ovn-controller creates and updates forwarding database
entries as instructed by the put_fdb logical action. It
also refreshes timestamps for active entries. It writes
the mac, dp_key, port_key, and timestamp columns.
Learned_Route
When built with Linux Netlink support (HAVE_NETLINK),
ovn-controller synchronizes routes learned from the host
routing table. It creates and removes rows and writes the
datapath, logical_port, ip_prefix, and nexthop columns.
RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS
ovn-appctl can send commands to a running ovn-controller process. The
following list describes commands specific to ovn-controller and its
incremental processing engine. Shared OVS libraries can register addi‐
tional commands; use ovn-appctl -t ovn-controller list-commands to list
the commands available in a running process.
exit [--restart]
Causes ovn-controller to gracefully terminate. With
--restart, it skips the database cleanup normally done on
exit.
ct-zone-list
Lists each local logical port and its connection tracking
zone.
evpn/remote-vtep-list
Lists the remote EVPN VTEPs learned from the host neigh‐
bor table, including their IP addresses, UDP ports, and
VNIs. This command is registered in all builds, but when
ovn-controller is built without Linux Netlink support
(HAVE_NETLINK), it does not send a reply and ovn-appctl
waits indefinitely by default.
evpn/vtep-arp-list
Lists the EVPN ARP and IPv6 neighbor entries maintained
by ovn-controller.
evpn/vtep-binding-list
Lists the bindings between remote EVPN VTEPs and OVN
datapaths.
evpn/vtep-fdb-list
Lists the EVPN forwarding database entries maintained by
ovn-controller.
evpn/vtep-multicast-group-list
Lists the EVPN multicast groups and their remote VTEP
bindings.
meter-table-list
Lists each meter table entry and its local meter id.
group-table-list
Lists each group table entry and its local group id.
inject-pkt microflow
Injects microflow into the connected Open vSwitch in‐
stance. microflow must contain an ingress logical port
(inport argument) that is present on the Open vSwitch in‐
stance.
The microflow argument describes the packet whose for‐
warding is to be simulated, in the syntax of an OVN logi‐
cal expression, as described in ovn-sb(5), to express
constraints. The parser understands prerequisites; for
example, if the expression refers to ip4.src, there is no
need to explicitly state ip4 or eth.type == 0x800.
connection-status
Show OVN SBDB connection status for the chassis.
recompute
Trigger a full compute iteration in ovn-controller based
on the contents of the Southbound database and local OVS
database. This command is deprecated; use inc-engine/re‐‐
compute instead.
This command is intended to use only in the event of a
bug in the incremental processing engine in ovn-con‐‐
troller to avoid inconsistent states. It should therefore
be used with care as full recomputes are cpu intensive.
sb-cluster-state-reset
Reset southbound database cluster status when databases
are destroyed and rebuilt.
If all databases in a clustered southbound database are
removed from disk, then the stored index of all databases
will be reset to zero. This will cause ovn-controller to
be unable to read or write to the southbound database,
because it will always detect the data as stale. In such
a case, run this command so that ovn-controller will re‐
set its local index so that it can interact with the
southbound database again.
debug/delay-nb-cfg-report seconds
This command is used to delay ovn-controller updating the
nb_cfg back to OVN_Southbound database. This is useful
when ovn-nbctl --wait=hv is used to measure end-to-end
latency in a large scale environment. See ovn-nbctl(8)
for more details.
debug/dump-lflow-conj-ids
Dumps the logical flow conjunction IDs currently allo‐
cated by ovn-controller.
debug/dump-local-bindings
Dumps the local logical port binding data maintained by
ovn-controller.
debug/dump-local-datapaths
Dumps the local datapaths maintained by ovn-controller.
debug/dump-local-template-vars
Dumps the chassis-local template variables maintained by
ovn-controller.
debug/dump-mac-bindings
Dumps the local MAC bindings maintained by ovn-con‐‐
troller.
debug/dump-peer-ports
Dumps the peer ports associated with local datapaths.
debug/dump-related-ports
Dumps the logical ports related to this chassis.
debug/enable-timewarp
Enables the time-warp facility and registers the
time/stop and time/warp commands, which respectively stop
and advance the monotonic clock for debugging and testing
time-based behavior.
debug/pause
Pauses the main ovn-controller processing loop for debug‐
ging.
debug/resume
Resumes a processing loop paused by debug/pause.
debug/status
Reports whether the main processing loop is running or
paused.
lflow-cache/flush
Flushes the ovn-controller logical flow cache.
lflow-cache/show-stats
Displays logical flow cache statistics: enabled/disabled,
per cache type entry counts.
flush-lflow-cache
Flushes the logical flow cache. This command is depre‐
cated; use lflow-cache/flush instead.
inc-engine/show-stats
Displays the following ovn-controller counters for each
engine node:
• recompute
• compute
• cancel
inc-engine/show-stats engine_node_name [counter_name]
Display the ovn-controller engine counter(s) for the
specified engine_node_name. counter_name is optional and
can be one of recompute, compute or cancel.
inc-engine/clear-stats
Reset ovn-controller engine counters.
inc-engine/recompute
Triggers a full recompute of the incremental processing
engine on the next iteration.
inc-engine/compute-log-timeout msecs
Sets the threshold in milliseconds that determines the
log severity for engine recomputes and incremental change
handlers. Events taking more than msecs milliseconds are
logged at INFO, subject to rate limiting; shorter events
and events taking exactly msecs milliseconds are logged
at DEBUG. The default threshold is 500 milliseconds.
inc-engine/list-stopwatches [node]
Lists the engine nodes and their change handler names. If
node is specified, only the handlers for that engine node
are listed.
inc-engine/enable-stopwatch [node]
Enables the per-node and per-handler stopwatches in the
incremental processing engine. If node is specified, only
that node’s stopwatches are enabled; otherwise all nodes
are affected. While enabled, every engine node recompute
and change handler invocation is timed and the results
can be viewed with the stopwatch/show command. Stop‐
watches are disabled by default because they add measur‐
able CPU overhead.
inc-engine/disable-stopwatch [node]
Disables the per-node and per-handler stopwatches in the
incremental processing engine. If node is specified, only
that node’s stopwatches are disabled; otherwise all nodes
are affected. This is the default state.
OVN 26.09.90 ovn-controller ovn-controller(8)