First, disclaimer: I’m an HP employee. HP’s a major contributor to the OpenSwitch project. Just thought you should know in case you think that affects my opinion here.

This is the first in some blog posts that detail my experience with the new OpenSwitch project. It’s an interesting project and i’m hoping that it’s got some legs on it. Imagine, if we actually had the whole industry started to focus around a common network operating system that they could contribute to . Any one could fix bugs or write documentation and feel like you’re helping to drive the whole industry forward. It’s a pretty ambitious project, but something that I think could be very very interesting. So it’s time to get dirty and start to dig into it.

What is OpenSwitch?

According to the webpage “The OpenSwitch Platform is an open source, Linux-based network operating system (NOS) platform. Built under the open source model, OpenSwitch offers the freedom of innovation while maintaining stability and limiting vulnerability.”

You can read more on it here

Mailing Lists

One of the best ways to keep up with what’s going on with any OpenSource project is to subscribe to the mailing list. You can subscribe to the OpenSwitch mailing list by clicking on the following links.

Kicking the tires

It looks like the OpenSwitch project has put out a version that will work with a combination of VirtualBox, Vagrant, and Docker.

The documentation looks pretty complete and is available here.

What’s next

This idea of a community drive NOS is something that’s been kicked around for awhile. Great time to kick the tires and see how much work has been done and what’s currently available.

Look for more posts soon!

@netmanchris