Throughput and Latency of Virtual Switching with Open vSwitch: A Quantitative Analysis

Virtual switches, like Open vSwitch, have emerged as an important part of today’s data centers. They connect interfaces of virtual machines and provide an uplink to the physical network via network interface cards. We discuss usage scenarios for virtual switches involving physical and virtual network interfaces. We present extensive black-box tests to quantify the throughput and latency of software switches with emphasis on the market leader, Open vSwitch. Finally, we explain the observed effects using white-box measurements.