Features
Open vSwitch supports the following features:
- Visibility into inter-VM communication via NetFlow, sFlow(R), IPFIX, SPAN, RSPAN, and GRE-tunneled mirrors
- LACP (IEEE 802.1AX-2008)
- Standard 802.1Q VLAN model with trunking
- Multicast snooping
- IETF Auto-Attach SPBM and rudimentary required LLDP support
- BFD and 802.1ag link monitoring
- STP (IEEE 802.1D-1998) and RSTP (IEEE 802.1D-2004)
- Fine-grained QoS control
- Support for HFSC qdisc
- Per VM interface traffic policing
- NIC bonding with source-MAC load balancing, active backup, and L4 hashing
- OpenFlow protocol support (including many extensions for virtualization)
- IPv6 support
- Multiple tunneling protocols (GRE, VXLAN, STT, and Geneve, with IPsec support)
- Remote configuration protocol with C and Python bindings
- Kernel and user-space forwarding engine options
- Multi-table forwarding pipeline with flow-caching engine
- Forwarding layer abstraction to ease porting to new software and hardware platforms