Opendaylight
TL;DR; RUN AWAY!
I got quite the interest in it. It sounded nice. People said really, really important things. Transactions, consistency, abstraction over specific implementation details, etc. This smooth cisco talk is a pinnacle of all that.
I spend a week on it. I got it … running? Basically, unpack and run. I made it having all southbound and northbound features, but…
It’s an abyss. You stare a little, and you start to see things. You stare a bit longer and it starts to stare at you.
Where is the start point? Well, right out of the door: you install it, and, what?
… You go to read documentation. There is a controller. The Controller. The main part of SDN software, part, which (as I understood) provides northbound API. And here is the documentation for The Main Part of 2.5M+ lines of code (2017 estimate):
- go to dev-guide
(end of document).
You don’t believe me, do you?
https://docs.opendaylight.org/projects/controller/en/v2.0.3/index.htmlCheck the link. It contain a single word, leading to dev guide. No user guide, no administrator guide.
Are there any docs on API? Nope, only references to RFC.
It all designed by committee for committee. The first time in my life I feel myself completely incapable to even try to start to use it. All examples in a book no longer works. Parts of a new (August 2020) release are dependent on Python2 (./bin/idmtool). Newer versions have all important for ‘proof-of-concept’ modules removed: UI (dlux), l2 switch (odl-l2switch-switch), etc.
Moreover, a freshly installed ODL, even without any configuration changes start to trace on whispers of external connections. Are null pointer exceptions a normal thing in Java? Should we have a trace on each LLDP speaker failure?
It just make no sense. There is a great picture when someone speak about ideas, but look-n-feel is terrible. It so terrible, that even if some magical guru (I saw few offers, for ~$3k a day) makes it running, I really, really doubt (s)he would make it any better.
Generally, I found that hype around ODL start to wear of around end of 2017. After that all we have just crumbs and … I don’t know — some vendors (telco, mostly) whose are using it for hyper-convergent software-defined NFV and other junk-words of telco wet dream dictionary.
I pass. I honestly pass on this monstrosity.
