Open vSwitch Documentation

How the Documentation is Organised

The Open vSwitch documentation is organised into multiple sections:

• Installation guides guide you through installing Open vSwitch (OVS) on a variety of different platforms
• Tutorials take you through a series of steps to configure OVS in sandboxed environments
• Topic guides provide a high level overview of OVS internals and operation
• How-to guides are recipes or use-cases for OVS. They are more advanced than the tutorials.
• Frequently Asked Questions provide general insight into a variety of topics related to configuration and operation of OVS.

First Steps

Getting started with Open vSwitch (OVS)? Start here.

• Overview: What Is Open vSwitch? | Why Open vSwitch?
• Install: Open vSwitch on Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD | Open vSwitch without Kernel Support | Open vSwitch on NetBSD | Open vSwitch on Windows | Open vSwitch on Citrix XenServer | Open vSwitch with DPDK | Open vSwitch with AF_XDP | Installation FAQs
• Tutorials: OVS Faucet Tutorial | Open vSwitch Advanced Features | OVS Conntrack Tutorial | OVS IPsec Tutorial |

Deeper Dive

• Architecture Design Decisions In Open vSwitch | OpenFlow Support in Open vSwitch | Integration Guide for Centralized Control | Porting Open vSwitch to New Software or Hardware | Open vSwitch Extensions
• DPDK Using Open vSwitch with DPDK | DPDK vHost User Ports
• Windows OVS-on-Hyper-V Design
• Integrations: Language Bindings
• Reference Guides: Reference Guide
• Testing Testing Fuzzing
• Packaging: Debian Packaging for Open vSwitch | RHEL 5.6, 6.x Packaging for Open vSwitch | Fedora, RHEL 7.x Packaging for Open vSwitch

The Open vSwitch Project

Learn more about the Open vSwitch project and about how you can contribute:

• Community: Open vSwitch Release Process | Authors | Mailing Lists | Patchwork | Reporting Bugs in Open vSwitch | Open vSwitch’s Security Process
• Contributing: Submitting Patches | Backporting patches | Open vSwitch Coding Style | Open vSwitch Windows Datapath Coding Style
• Maintaining: The Linux Foundation Open vSwitch Project Charter | Committers | Expectations for Developers with Open vSwitch Repo Access | OVS Committer Grant/Revocation Policy | Emeritus Status for OVS Committers
• Documentation: Open vSwitch Documentation Style | Building Open vSwitch Documentation | How Open vSwitch’s Documentation Works

Getting Help

• Seeing an issue of potential bug? Report problems to bugs@openvswitch.org
• Looking for specific information? Try the Index, Module Index or the detailed table of contents.