This section discusses the design and implementation of the distributed aspects of ONOS.
ONOS is built from the ground-up as a distributed SDN operating system. Consequently, ONOS may be deployed as a collection of servers that coordinate with each other to provide capabilities that is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, distribution provides fault-tolerance and resilience even when individual controller instances fail. Additionally, the system as whole can take on workloads that are far greater than what a single instance might be able to handle (scalability).
While distribution has its benefits, it also presents some interesting engineering problems. The following subsections delve into how ONOS identifies, and approaches, a select set of these aspects.
The next section presents an overview of cluster management, and how ONOS instances elect designated masters for each device a cluster discovers. The following section describes how network state is distributed across instances.
Previous : The Device Subsystem
Next: Cluster Coordination