The HPE VAN SDN Controller software is built upon off-the-shelf Ubuntu Linux, Java 1.7, and OSGI (Virgo stack and Equinox framework) and uses an Apache Cassandra distributed post-relational database.
Keystone is an external service that provides authentication and high level authorization services. It supports token-based authentication
REST API and GUI framework are used by SDN application developers for building applications (RESTful web services and web based UIs).
The following gives a short description of the controller components:
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The controller Application Manager enables installing, upgrading, enabling (starting), disabling (stopping), and uninstalling SDN applications on the controller.
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The audit log records events related to activities, operations, and configuration changes initiated by an authorized user. The audit log is managed by the controller audit log service.
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The alert log records information about events that affect controller operation, and in some cases indicate that some action is needed to correct a condition. Alerts are managed by the controller alert service.
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The controller uses the embedded applications Topology Manager and Topology Viewer to collect and display information about the OpenFlow network.
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The controller provides a framework to back up and restore controller and application state in a backup file. The backup file can be copied and stored for later use. The stored backup file can be uploaded to the controller.
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The Distributed Coordination Framework is one of the high-availability features of the controller. It provides the infrastructure for controller-to-controller communication and coordination of state information for controllers in a controller team.
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The controller can be configured in a team. The teaming services of the controller keeps the runtime state of each controller in the team (active, unreachable, or suspended) up to date and is used by other parts of the controller for functions related to high-availability.
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The Device Drivers model the capabilities of the devices and provide APIs for interacting with different device types.
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The controller uses the embedded applications OpenFlow Link Discovery and OpenFlow Node Discovery to discover information about the OpenFlow network.
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The OpenFlow controller (also called the core controller) handles the connections from OpenFlow devices and provides the means for upper layers of software to interact with those devices.
The HPE VAN SDN Controller includes a default set of core network service applications that are installed with the controller (see List of controller embedded applications.