Illumio Segmentation vs OVN-Kubernetes
Illumio Segmentation
illumio.comOVN-Kubernetes
ovn-kubernetes.ioSide by side
| Figure | Illumio Segmentation | OVN-Kubernetes |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Microsegmentation Software | 8.0 (#6) | 7.4 (#13) |
| Founded | 2013 | 2014 |
| Purpose | Illumio Segmentation uses one policy engine to stop lateral movement across cloud workloads, endpoints, and data centers. | OVN-Kubernetes is an open-source Kubernetes networking solution and CNI-conformant plugin built on OVN and Open vSwitch. |
| Support | Illumio offers customer success advisors as a main non-technical point of contact and publishes regional support phone numbers. | The project holds open community meetings on alternate Mondays at 5:00 PM CET/CEST using CNCF Zoom. |
Plans
In their own words
Illumio Segmentation
Illumio Segmentation has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
OVN-Kubernetes
OVN-Kubernetes is a free, open-source networking solution and CNI-conformant plugin for Kubernetes, built on OVN and Open vSwitch. It handles pod IP allocation and interfaces, GENEVE overlays, Kubernetes Services, EndpointSlices, network policies, and IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack clusters. OVN ACLs enforce NetworkPolicy, AdminNetworkPolicy, and EgressFirewall rules; EgressIP, EgressService, and EgressQoS govern outbound traffic. Pods can join multiple networks, and the project also supports multicast, traffic shaping, BGP route advertisements, and SmartNIC or DPU offload. For KubeVirt, it provides persistent IPs during live migration; Hybrid Overlay enables mixed Windows and Linux networking. Deployment documentation covers Kind, Helm, DPU acceleration, kubeadm, and source builds. Requirements depend on OVN, nft, Multus, CNI, and Kubernetes versions; the master branch lists Kubernetes 1.33 or newer. Secondary User Defined Networks currently lack north-south traffic and core Kubernetes Services support. AdminNetworkPolicy APIs remain alpha and may change before stable v1.