ONOS may be run in a variety of ways, in both single-node and distributed/multi-node development configurations, running in a host OS environment (e.g. macOS), in single or multiple VMs, or in single or multiple hardware servers.

This section describes several supported development workflows:

• Local workflow is perhaps the simplest way to run ONOS by itself, and is well-suited to running ONOS directly on a macOS development machine.
• Mininet and onos.py workflow allows you to simultaneously start a single ONOS node or ONOS cluster and create a virtual network, and is an easy way to create a virtual ONOS cluster inside a single VM.
• Cell workflow describes the cell infrastructure which works well for creating an ONOS cluster using multiple hardware servers or VMs.
• Multiple instances using LXC describes a way of using cells with LXC containers, and is an alternate way of creating an ONOS cluster in a single VM or server.
  
  

If you're unsure of which workflow to start with, try the Local workflow or the Mininet and onos.py workflow.