Hi Sumit, Very good questions. I'll give you my take inline, and Ryu should jump in as well :)
Dan On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 12:50 PM, Sumit Naiksatam (snaiksat) < snaik...@cisco.com> wrote: > Hi Ryu, Dan, and others involved, > > I had some questions regarding how the code base in the > "network-refactoring-l2" branch currently works (or is supposed to) with > Quantum. > The network-refactoring-l2 branch itself doesn't actually interact with Quantum. It is really just a first step to providing more flexibility within nova for how VM interfaces are created and plugged into a "switch". This will be very helpful for many people using Quantum, as the existing nova code was hard-coded to use the Linux bridge. > > As I understand, eventually we want to get to a point where one should > be able to run the Quantum service instead of the nova-network service. > I actually don't think that's necessarily true. The existing nova-network service does many things beyond L2 networking, namely: - IP address management (melange project is targeting providing an improved version of this) - Network Node capabilities, including DHCP, L3 gateway, VPN, metadata server, floating IP forwarding, etc (such functionality may grow to be their own independent services, or an addon to Quantum in the future). - Network orchestration, in the sense that it automatically attaches VIFs to networks based on config (vlan vs. flat manager) and project assignment (donabe aims to become the primary mechanism for this type of orchestration, though some simple behavior equivalent to the existing flat/flatdhcp/vlan models may make sense to stay in nova for a while). There are some obvious next steps for D4: - Ryu will continue the work to merge his work that makes sure that other nova services retrieve network info via the API (not the DB). This is a critical step. - We'll expose interface-ids via the nova API (likely as an extension) - Troy's team will continue integrating the melange code with nova. - We'll probably create an alternate NetworkManager class (and corresponding manager utility) that uses melange for IPAM, quantum for L2 networks, and supports several different orchestration options. > However, we are not there yet. Currently one still needs to run the > nova-network service in order to be able create the network on the nova > side of things. If this understanding is correct, here are few thoughts > and questions - > > (1) How are you reconciling the network created within nova, with that > created in Quantum? > Current nova networks are a bit tricky, as they represent both L2 networks and IP subnets. A new network manager class + utility will give us the flexibility to handle this however we want. > > (2) The blueprint for this branch indicates that OpenStack APIs will be > implemented as extension APIs in Quantum. Do we have any documentation > on this API? (Also, I did not find any implementation in the Quantum > trunk, I am guessing we haven't done that yet, right?) > I'm not sure I follow what you're saying here. I suspect you are referring to the fact that nova-api (i.e. the OpenStack API) will expose interface-ids as an API extension? Those changes have not gone into nova yet, but are on the list I mentioned above. > > (3) There was earlier some talk about nova using an "administrative API" > to communicate with Quantum. Is that still the plan? In general, what is > the thinking around how nova would communicate with Quantum? > There are possible uses that I have mentioned for such an admin API: - Reporting "interface bindings" from nova to a quantum plugin. Right now, since the nature of the binding is specific to the nova vif-plugin itself, we're leaving the communication of this binding info up to the plugin itself, so you're free to do whatever you want (your quantum plugin can expose additional APIs if needed). If there is code to share here, we'll probably just do it by sharing a code library (I suspect the new network manager we build will also require the quantum client library, which I would see an a nova dependency if using quantum). - Communicating permission to plug a vif. There have been a couple emails back and forth about this on the list. I am hoping we can use keystone for this, which in case no direct nova/quantum communication is needed. Otherwise, we'll probably create an admin API for this. > > Thanks, > ~Sumit. > -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan Wendlandt Nicira Networks, Inc. www.nicira.com | www.openvswitch.org Sr. Product Manager cell: 650-906-2650 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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