OpenFlow capability differences between new Aruba's (2930F, 3810, 5400R)

[rsanger]

Hi,

I'm looking at the new Aruba switches (2930F, 3810, 5400R) for OpenFlow development, and in particular their custom pipeline support.

Is there a difference between between them other than backplane bandwidth and port configurations for an OpenFlow use case. Is the custom OpenFlow pipeline the same on each in terms of capacity and features? Or any other reason one is better than another?

Thanks,

Richard

[Abhay_B]

Hello Richard,

In terms of custom pipeline on these 3 devices, there are no differences in terms of the number of tables they can hold, the fields they can match and the actions they can execute from an OpenFlow standpoint.  

The 2930F though has a maximum limit of 16K OpenFlow rules compared to the 64K on the 3810 and the 5400R.

Thanks!

Abhay

[ShaunWackerly]

Hi Richard,

In addition to what Abhay mentioned above, I'd like to point out that some conditions (depending on pipeline definition, content, and traffic load) may cause the ingress card to limit bandwidth, rather than the backplane. In that case, modular products like 5412R would provide the greatest number of modules (ingress cards) over which to spread the traffic load (12 modules max, as compared to a 2-module equivalent in 3810 and 2930F). Another way to increase the number of modules is with front-plane stacking (5400R) or back-plane stacking (3810).

Are you looking at defining your own pipeline, or would you be using the default custom mode pipeline?

Shaun

[rsanger]

Thanks for the info, at this point it is mainly for development so overall bandwidth is not the largest concern. From the responses I think either the 2930F or 3180 will be large enough.

We would be looking at defining our own custom pipeline, and using others already out there such as faucet's.

Thanks,

Richard

[rsanger]

In terms of the custom pipeline the OF Guide says up to 64k hash best case (single match) and 8k TCAM.
So for the 2930F is best case 16K in hash tables and still 8k TCAM?

Thanks,

Richard

[Abhay_B · Accepted solution]

The firmware version WC.16.03 doesn't stop the controller from defining an OpenFlow custom pipeline using more than 16K hash entries (either in a single table or across multiple tables) on a 2930F. But when the pipeline reaches the limit of 16k flows, the switch would reject any new flows on the pipeline.

The OpenFlow agent on the switch keeps  a copy of all the flows installed (including the ones sitting in hardware) for various reasons and since the 2930F houses a lower memory (1GB) vs. a 3810/5400R (4GB), the scale on the 2930F has been limited to 16k.

Thanks!

Abhay