Hello, I'm back to looking at southbound database security concerns in
OVN. A previous thread discussing approaches was here:
http://openvswitch.org/pipermail/dev/2016-August/078106.html
I'm now working with a few others on implementing a proposed solution. The
overview is that we'd like to make ovn-controller a read-only client of the
southbound database.
The task breakdown is:
1) Add support to ovsdb-server for read-only remotes. The port reachable
by ovn-controller would only accept read-only connections.
2) Remove support from ovn-controller for automatically creating chassis
and encap records. Document this as an administrative step for adding a
new chassis to the system, instead.
3) Remove support from ovn-controller for setting the chassis column of
Port_Binding records. Instead, have this handled by ovn-northd based on
binding instructions given in the northbound database.
As a nice side effect, this helps solve one of the difficulties with live
migration (two chassis fighting to own a port while the migration is in
progress). Instead, we would update OVN when we know the migration is
complete.
I was originally thinking we may need an upgrade utility to help existing
environments, but I think ovn-northd can handle this automatically.
For the northbound database, I was thinking of adding a new option for
logical ports called "chassis" with a value of the hostname of the chassis
the port should be bound to.
4) Remove use of MAC_bindings table from ovn-controller. Replace it with a
local cache, instead. I'm proposing just keeping it in memory in
ovn-controller, but we could also make use of the openvswitch db.
One detail I haven't fully thought through: what should happen to the
MAC_Bindings table? Dropping the table seems not backwards compatible and
would break a rolling upgrade scenario. Should we leave it as unused for
one release, and then remove it in the next release? More generally, I
think we need to document our upgrade strategy and related rules for
database schema changes.
--
Russell Bryant
_______________________________________________
dev mailing list
dev@openvswitch.org
http://openvswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
