On 6/16/26 2:55 PM, Dumitru Ceara via dev wrote:
> From: Loke Berne <[email protected]>
> 
> Large scale OVN deployments commonly disable the per-chassis nb_cfg
> write-back mechanism by setting options:enable_chassis_nb_cfg_update
> to false.  With thousands of hypervisors each writing their nb_cfg
> completion back to Chassis_Private on every generation, the resulting
> write amplification can overload the southbound OVSDB cluster.
> Disabling write-back eliminates this pressure but also removes the
> only existing signal for measuring how long a northbound change takes
> to reach each hypervisor.
> 
> OVN_Northbound already records nb_cfg_timestamp in NB_Global when
> ovn-northd advances nb_cfg, but hypervisors connect to the southbound
> database only.  This patch adds the same timestamp to SB_Global,
> written atomically with each nb_cfg update.  ovn-controller reads
> this value and stores it in the local OVS bridge external_ids as
> ovn-nb-cfg-sb-ts alongside the existing ovn-nb-cfg-ts (local
> completion time).  An external collector such as ovs_exporter can
> read both values from the bridge and compute per-chassis propagation
> latency histograms without any writes to the southbound database,
> keeping measurement overhead independent of fleet size.
> 
> Placing the timestamp in SB_Global rather than requiring collectors
> to reach the northbound database means it travels transparently
> through any relay or VPN between the southbound cluster and the
> hypervisor, naturally including that transit in the measurement.
> 
> Testing: confirmed in OVN sandbox and a two-container central/HV
> setup that nb_cfg_timestamp is written to SB_Global on each nb_cfg
> advance, propagated to br-int external_ids as ovn-nb-cfg-sb-ts, and
> continues to update correctly when enable_chassis_nb_cfg_update is
> set to false.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Loke Berne <[email protected]>
> Assisted-by: Claude Sonnet 4.6
> ---

Hi Loke,

I went ahead and pushed this patch to main.  I also added you to the
AUTHORS.rst list.

Thanks a lot for the contribution!

Regards,
Dumitru

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