Building a Network Operating System Using Linux and Yocto - John Mehaffey, HPE
Channel: The Linux Foundation
Date: 2020-05-05

Building a Network Operating System Using Linux and Yocto - John Mehaffey, HPE*

A Network Operating System puts special demands on the Linux Kernel, in terms of features and scale. John will show the size and performance issues we encountered, and tricks to overcome them.

For the Halon NOS, which was based off the Openswitch project, the Linux kernel went from version 4.4 in the initial release through all the LTS kernels to version 4.19 currently. After each upgrade there is a period of time when all issues are ascribed to the upgrade. John will share lessons learned in managing expectations and perceptions after upgrading the kernel.

John will share the problems we encountered with upgrading infrastructure (kernel, subsystems, and Yocto) in a product development organization, and how we overcame them.

John will show how we used Yocto Layers to implement Platform Independent and Platform Dependent features, in a multiple platform environment.

Finally, John will share lessons we learned about PCI software architecture for modular chassis network switches.