
      This is the first in a series of Open vSwitch tech talks that we are
      starting to run internally at VMware every week or two.  This episode is
      particularly about read-copy-update,
      or RCU for short, which is a synchronization technique that allows reads
      to be very cheap (almost free), with some memory cost.  This talk covers
      reasons why RCU can be preferred over other techniques, such as readers-writer
      locks, and its relationship with lockless synchronization and
      reference counts.  It also covers some of the RCU API within OVS (and why
      OVS has its own API instead of using liburcu).
    

    
      The ovs-rcu.h
      header from the OVS source repository is useful reading along with this
      episode.
    

    
      OVS Orbit is produced by Ben Pfaff.  The
      intro music in this episode is Drive,
      featuring cdk and DarrylJ, copyright 2013, 2016 by Alex.  The bumper
      music is Yeah Ant
      featuring Wired Ant and Javolenus, copyright 2013 by Speck.  The outro
      music is Space
      Bazooka featuring Doxen Zsigmond, copyright 2013 by Kirkoid.  All
      content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
      Unported (CC BY 3.0) license.
    

RCU in Open vSwitch Userspace

Interviews and topics of interest to Open vSwitch developers and users, published twice a month, hosted and produced by Ben Pfaff.

Technology

Tech News

Podcasting

Gadgets

Software How-To


      VMware Research High Bits is a podcast coming soon from VMware's research
      group.  This episode is a sneak preview of episode 1, with Lalith Suresh.
      Lalith is a researcher in the VMware Research Group who specializes in
      measurement, design, and implementation of large-scale networked and
      distributed systems.  Last year, Lalith published a blog
      entry with advice on how to build software systems for research, and
      then he followed up with a video with more
      details.  This episode interviews Lalith to learn more about his approach
      to building research systems.
    

    
      To learn more about Lalith's work, visit his VMware
      Research webpage or his personal blog Comfortably Geek, where you can also find
      his contact information.
    

    
      VMware Research High Bits is produced by Ben Pfaff.  The bumper sound in this
      episode is Ben biting into an apple.
    

Sneak Preview: VMware Research High Bits, with Lalith Suresh from VMware Research


      Bruce Davie and Larry Peterson are the authors of the Systems Approach series of
      computer networking textbooks.  Mark Twain has been called the greatest
      humorist the United States has produced and the father of American
      literature.  This episode, the first collaboration among these celebrated
      authors, incorporates elements of the works of both [1, 2].
    

    
      For more information on the Systems Approach series, visit systemsapproach.org or follow
      the series on substack as systemsapproach or
      Twitter as and @SystemsAppr.  On Twitter, you
      can find Bruce as @_drbruced,
      Larry as @_llpete, and Mark as
      @MarkTwain.
    

    
      Bruce and Larry were previously featured in Episode
      73: Computer Networks: A Systems Approach.
    

    
      OVS Orbit is produced by Ben Pfaff.  The
      intro music in this episode is Drive,
      featuring cdk and DarrylJ, copyright 2013, 2016 by Alex.  The outro music
      is Space
      Bazooka featuring Doxen Zsigmond, copyright 2013 by Kirkoid.
      Fanfares et Simphonies by Jean-Joseph Mouret, performed by Jean-Marie
      Leclair, dir. Jean-François Paillard, downloaded via imslp.org,
      is licensed under Creative
      Commons Zero 1.0 - Non-PD US.  The scratch sound effect by Stumber
      was downloaded via freesound.org
      and licensed under Creative Common
      Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0).  The episode as a whole is
      licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
      Unported (CC BY 3.0).
    

The Systems Approach, with Bruce Davie, Larry Peterson, and Mark Twain


      Bruce Davie and Larry Peterson talk about their Systems Approach series of
      books on computer networking.  These books began with the textbook Computer Networks: A
      Systems Approach, published in 1996.  After publishing the fifth
      edition in 2011, they took their book "open source" by making the text
      freely available on
      Github under a Creative Common license.  Now the original book is
      part of a series that also includes "micro-books" on SDN and 5G, with
      more books in preparation.  In this episode, Bruce and Larry talk about
      their motivations and future plans, including trying to rope your host
      into writing a book on Open vSwitch.
    

    
      For more information on the series, visit systemsapproach.org or follow
      the series on substack as systemsapproach or
      Twitter as and @SystemsAppr.  You can find
      Bruce on Twitter as @_drbruced and Larry as @_llpete.
    

    
      OVS Orbit is produced by Ben Pfaff.  The
      intro music in this episode is Drive,
      featuring cdk and DarrylJ, copyright 2013, 2016 by Alex.  The bumper
      music is Yeah Ant
      featuring Wired Ant and Javolenus, copyright 2013 by Speck.  The outro
      music is Space
      Bazooka featuring Doxen Zsigmond, copyright 2013 by Kirkoid.  All
      content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
      Unported (CC BY 3.0) license.
    

Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, with Bruce Davie and Larry Peterson


      Dmitry Yusupov submitted a talk to the Open vSwitch 2020 Fall Conference
      that we weren't able to fit into the schedule.  This podcast, recorded in
      December 2020, is based on the material that Dmitry presented in a video available on YouTube.
      The slides for Dmitry's talk are also
      available.
    

    
      The abstract for this talk is:
    

    
      
        OVSDB (management protocol RFC 7047) is a fundamental building block of
        modern SDN architecture based on OVN/OVS. OVSDB is the key component
        that is responsible for efficient scalability of large deployments,
        such as 1000+ node Kubernetes clusters when CNI function is OVN based.
      

      
        OVSDB was originally designed to store configuration for Open vSwitch
        daemon, however, it was later extended to be part of OVN architecture,
        with added RAFT clustering support and improved scale-out capabilities,
        such as efficient scale-out caches.
      

      
        This talk brings a question of scaling up OVSDB with introduction of
        OVSDB Query Optimizer using primary and alternate key indexing.  We
        will be also looking at OVSDB with Query Optimizer as high-performance
        Key-Value API interface and compare it to ETCD.
      
    

    
      You can contact Dmitry as @dmitryy on Twitter, or via email
      at dyusupov@nvidia.com.
    

    
      OVS Orbit is produced by Ben Pfaff.  The
      intro music in this episode is Drive,
      featuring cdk and DarrylJ, copyright 2013, 2016 by Alex.  The bumper
      music is Yeah Ant
      featuring Wired Ant and Javolenus, copyright 2013 by Speck.  The outro
      music is Space
      Bazooka featuring Doxen Zsigmond, copyright 2013 by Kirkoid.  All
      content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
      Unported (CC BY 3.0) license.
    

The OVSDB Query Optimizer and Key-Value Interface, with Dmitry Yusupov from NVIDIA


      Frederick Kautz and Nikolay Nikolaev are developers on the Network Service Mesh project,
      which provides additional networking features for Kubernetes above what
      is available from Kubernetes CNI networking implementations.
    

    
      OVS Orbit is produced by Ben Pfaff.  The
      intro music in this episode is Drive,
      featuring cdk and DarrylJ, copyright 2013, 2016 by Alex.  The bumper
      music is Yeah Ant
      featuring Wired Ant and Javolenus, copyright 2013 by Speck.  The outro
      music is Space
      Bazooka featuring Doxen Zsigmond, copyright 2013 by Kirkoid.  All
      content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
      Unported (CC BY 3.0) license.
    

RCU in Open vSwitch Userspace

Download our free app to listen on your phone