The reference Cavium POD includes:
- five servers (one serving as a head node and four are serving as compute nodes)
- two virtual racks with one leaf (ToR) switch each
- two spine switches connecting the (virtual) racks
Alternative configurations may be used (e.g., different number of compute nodes, more head nodes, additional racks, two ToR per rack), where the ONOS auto-configured system adapts accordingly.
Switches
Several options are possible to build CORD fabric with Cavium XPliant® family of Ethernet switches, optimizing the solution for scalability, power and cost.
For the considerations of simplicity, the reference Cavium POD uses OCP-qualified AS7512-32X Edgecore Data Center Optimized Bare-Metal White-Box switch as both fabric spine and fabric leaf.
In a compact 1RU form factor, the Edgecore AS7512-32X switch supports 32 x QSFP28 ports, providing 1/10/25/50 GbE leaf connections to servers and 40/50/100 GbE spine interconnects.
The AS7512-32X is a bare-metal switch loaded with the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE), which supports the installation of compatible Network Operating System (NOS) offerings.
Servers
ODM servers based on Cavium ThunderX ARMv8 processors.
Software
The switches are compatible with ONOS 1.8 and up while the servers are running CORD 3.0 and up software.