Configuring the Networking service (neutron) (optional)

Configuring the Networking service (neutron) (optional)

The OpenStack Networking service (neutron) includes the following services:

Firewall as a Service (FWaaS)
Provides a software-based firewall that filters traffic from the router.
Load Balancer as a Service (LBaaS)
Provides load balancers that direct traffic to OpenStack instances or other servers outside the OpenStack deployment.
VPN as a Service (VPNaaS)
Provides a method for extending a private network across a public network.
BGP Dynamic Routing service
Provides a means for advertising self-service (private) network prefixes to physical network devices that support BGP.
SR-IOV Support
Provides the ability to provision virtual or physical functions to guest instances using SR-IOV and PCI passthrough. (Requires compatible NICs)

Firewall service (optional)

The following procedure describes how to modify the /etc/openstack_deploy/user_variables.yml file to enable FWaaS.

  1. Override the default list of neutron plugins to include firewall:

    neutron_plugin_base:
      - firewall
      - ...
    
  2. neutron_plugin_base is as follows:

    neutron_plugin_base:
       - router
       - firewall
       - neutron_lbaas.services.loadbalancer.plugin.LoadBalancerPluginv2
       - vpnaas
       - metering
       - qos
    
  3. Execute the neutron install playbook in order to update the configuration:

    # cd /opt/openstack-ansible/playbooks
    # openstack-ansible os-neutron-install.yml
    
  4. Execute the horizon install playbook to show the FWaaS panels:

    # cd /opt/openstack-ansible/playbooks
    # openstack-ansible os-horizon-install.yml
    

The FWaaS default configuration options may be changed through the conf override mechanism using the neutron_neutron_conf_overrides dict.

Load balancing service (optional)

The neutron-lbaas plugin for neutron provides a software load balancer service and can direct traffic to multiple servers. The service runs as an agent and it manages HAProxy configuration files and daemons.

The Newton release contains only the LBaaS v2 API. For more details about transitioning from LBaaS v1 to v2, review the Special notes about LBaaS section below.

Deployers can make changes to the LBaaS default configuration options via the neutron_lbaas_agent_ini_overrides dictionary. Review the documentation on the conf override mechanism for more details.

Deploying LBaaS v2

  1. Add the LBaaS v2 plugin to the neutron_plugin_base variable in /etc/openstack_deploy/user_variables.yml:

    neutron_plugin_base:
      - router
      - metering
      - neutron_lbaas.services.loadbalancer.plugin.LoadBalancerPluginv2
    

    Ensure that neutron_plugin_base includes all of the plugins that you want to deploy with neutron in addition to the LBaaS plugin.

    Adding the LBaaS v2 plugin to neutron_plugin_base automatically enables the Dashboard panels for LBaaS v2 when the os_horizon role is redeployed (see the following step).

  2. Run the neutron playbook to deploy the LBaaS v2 agent and enable the Dashboard panels for LBaaSv2:

    # cd /opt/openstack-ansible/playbooks
    # openstack-ansible os-neutron-install.yml
    # openstack-ansible os-horizon-install.yml
    

Special notes about LBaaS

LBaaS v1 was deprecated in the Mitaka release and is not available in the Newton release.

LBaaS v1 and v2 agents are unable to run at the same time. If you switch LBaaS v1 to v2, the v2 agent is the only agent running. The LBaaS v1 agent stops along with any load balancers provisioned under the v1 agent.

Load balancers are not migrated between LBaaS v1 and v2 automatically. Each implementation has different code paths and database tables. You need to manually delete load balancers, pools, and members before switching LBaaS versions. Recreate these objects afterwards.

Virtual private network service (optional)

The following procedure describes how to modify the /etc/openstack_deploy/user_variables.yml file to enable VPNaaS.

  1. Override the default list of neutron plugins to include vpnaas:

    neutron_plugin_base:
      - router
      - metering
    
  2. neutron_plugin_base is as follows:

    neutron_plugin_base:
       - router
       - metering
       - vpnaas
    
  3. Override the default list of specific kernel modules in order to include the necessary modules to run ipsec:

    openstack_host_specific_kernel_modules:
       - { name: "ebtables", pattern: "CONFIG_BRIDGE_NF_EBTABLES=", group: "network_hosts" }
       - { name: "af_key", pattern: "CONFIG_NET_KEY=", group: "network_hosts" }
       - { name: "ah4", pattern: "CONFIG_INET_AH=", group: "network_hosts" }
       - { name: "ipcomp", pattern: "CONFIG_INET_IPCOMP=", group: "network_hosts" }
    
  4. Execute the openstack hosts setup in order to load the kernel modules at boot and runtime in the network hosts

    # openstack-ansible openstack-hosts-setup.yml --limit network_hosts\
    --tags "openstack_hosts-config"
    
  5. Execute the neutron install playbook in order to update the configuration:

    # cd /opt/openstack-ansible/playbooks
    # openstack-ansible os-neutron-install.yml
    
  6. Execute the horizon install playbook to show the VPNaaS panels:

    # cd /opt/openstack-ansible/playbooks
    # openstack-ansible os-horizon-install.yml
    

The VPNaaS default configuration options are changed through the conf override mechanism using the neutron_neutron_conf_overrides dict.

BGP Dynamic Routing service (optional)

The BGP Dynamic Routing plugin for neutron provides BGP speakers which can advertise OpenStack project network prefixes to external network devices, such as routers. This is especially useful when coupled with the subnet pools feature, which enables neutron to be configured in such a way as to allow users to create self-service segmented IPv6 subnets.

The following procedure describes how to modify the /etc/openstack_deploy/user_variables.yml file to enable the BGP Dynamic Routing plugin.

  1. Add the BGP plugin to the neutron_plugin_base variable in /etc/openstack_deploy/user_variables.yml:

    neutron_plugin_base:
      - ...
      - neutron_dynamic_routing.services.bgp.bgp_plugin.BgpPlugin
    

    Ensure that neutron_plugin_base includes all of the plugins that you want to deploy with neutron in addition to the BGP plugin.

  2. Execute the neutron install playbook in order to update the configuration:

    # cd /opt/openstack-ansible/playbooks
    # openstack-ansible os-neutron-install.yml
    

SR-IOV Support (optional)

The following procedure describes how to modify the OpenStack-Ansible configuration to enable Neutron SR-IOV support.

  1. Define SR-IOV capable physical host interface for a provider network
As part of every Openstack-Ansible installation, all provider networks known to Neutron need to be configured inside the /etc/openstack_deploy/openstack_user_config.yml file. For each supported network type (e.g. vlan), the attribute sriov_host_interfaces can be defined to map ML2 network names (net_name attribute) to one or many physical interfaces. Additionally, the network will need to be assigned to the neutron_sriov_nic_agent container group.

Example configuration:

provider_networks
  - network:
    container_bridge: "br-vlan"
    container_type: "veth"
    container_interface: "eth11"
    type: "vlan"
    range: "1000:2000"
    net_name: "physnet1"
    sriov_host_interfaces: "p1p1,p4p1"
    group_binds:
      - neutron_linuxbridge_agent
      - neutron_sriov_nic_agent
  1. Configure Nova

    With SR-IOV, Nova uses PCI passthrough to allocate VFs and PFs to guest instances. Virtual Functions (VFs) represent a slice of a physical NIC, and are passed as virtual NICs to guest instances. Physical Functions (PFs), on the other hand, represent an entire physical interface and are passed through to a single guest.

    To use PCI passthrough in Nova, the PciPassthroughFilter filter needs to be added to the conf override nova_scheduler_default_filters. Finally, PCI devices available for passthrough need to be allow via the conf override nova_pci_passthrough_whitelist.

    Possible options which can be configured:

    # Single device configuration
    nova_pci_passthrough_whitelist: '{ "physical_network":"physnet1", "devname":"p1p1" }'
    
    # Multi device configuration
    nova_pci_passthrough_whitelist: '[{"physical_network":"physnet1", "devname":"p1p1"}, {"physical_network":"physnet1", "devname":"p4p1"}]'
    
    # Whitelisting by PCI Device Location
    # The example pattern for the bus location '0000:04:*.*' is very wide. Make sure that
    # no other, unintended devices, are whitelisted (see lspci -nn)
    nova_pci_passthrough_whitelist: '{"address":"0000:04:*.*", "physical_network":"physnet1"}'
    
    # Whitelisting by PCI Device Vendor
    # The example pattern limits matches to PCI cards with vendor id 8086 (Intel) and
    # product id 10ed (82599 Virtual Function)
    nova_pci_passthrough_whitelist: '{"vendor_id":"8086", "product_id":"10ed", "physical_network":"physnet1"}'
    
    # Additionally, devices can be matched by their type, VF or PF, using the dev_type parameter
    # and type-VF or type-PF options
    nova_pci_passthrough_whitelist: '{"vendor_id":"8086", "product_id":"10ed", "dev_type":"type-VF", physical_network":"physnet1"}'
    

    It is recommended to use whitelisting by either the Linux device name (devname attribute) or by the PCI vendor and product id combination (vendor_id and product_id attributes)

  2. Enable the SR-IOV ML2 plugin

    The conf override neutron_plugin_type variable defines the core ML2 plugin, and only one plugin can be defined at any given time. The conf override neutron_plugin_types variable can contain a list of additional ML2 plugins to load. Make sure that only compatible ML2 plugins are loaded at all times. The SR-IOV ML2 plugin is known to work with the linuxbridge (ml2.lxb) and openvswitch (ml2.ovs) ML2 plugins. ml2.lxb is the standard activated core ML2 plugin.

    neutron_plugin_types:
      - ml2.sriov
    
  3. Execute the Neutron install playbook in order to update the configuration:

    # cd /opt/openstack-ansible/playbooks
    # openstack-ansible os-neutron-install.yml
    # openstack-ansible os-nova-install.yml
    
  4. Check Neutron SR-IOV agent state

    After the playbooks have finished configuring Neutron and Nova, the new Neutron Agent state can be verified with:

    # neutron agent-list --agent_type 'NIC Switch agent'
    +--------------------------------------+------------------+-----------+-------+----------------+-------------------------+
    | id                                   | agent_type       | host      | alive | admin_state_up | binary                  |
    +--------------------------------------+------------------+-----------+-------+----------------+-------------------------+
    | 3012ff0e-de35-447b-aff6-fdb55b04c518 | NIC Switch agent | compute01 | :-)   | True           | neutron-sriov-nic-agent |
    | bb0c0385-394d-4e72-8bfe-26fd020df639 | NIC Switch agent | compute02 | :-)   | True           | neutron-sriov-nic-agent |
    +--------------------------------------+------------------+-----------+-------+----------------+-------------------------+
    

Deployers can make changes to the SR-IOV nic agent default configuration options via the neutron_sriov_nic_agent_ini_overrides dict. Review the documentation on the conf override mechanism for more details.

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