[openstack-dev] [Quantum/Nova] Improving VIF plugin

Salvatore Orlando sorlando at nicira.com
Wed Nov 7 09:52:11 UTC 2012


Hi,

I have been following this thread, and I agree with the need of allowing
Nova to access information about internals of the Quantum plugin so that
it's allowed to plug interfaces using the appropriate driver.
I think the APIs proposed by Gary are suitable, although the nature of the
binding object should be fleshed out a little bit better. Also I think Kyle
has a good point that this information should be per-port, not per-network,
as in some cases there will be port-specific parameter that needs to be
passed into the vif driver. The trade-off here is that instead of 1 call
per network there will be 1 call per port. The /port/<port-id>/binding
syntax in theory also allows for retrieving logical port and binding info
in one call.

Those APIs can easily be structured as admin-only; however we need to keep
in mind that at the moment nova-quantum interaction is performed within the
tenant context. We can either change this logic and say that Nova wil
always have admin access to Quantum, or that we use an elevated context
only for fetching port binding details. To this aim I would think about
adding a "service" role to Quantum, which should be used specifically for
retrieving binding details.

However, I am now reading that there might be use cases in which nova
pushes into back into Quantum concerning the way a VIF has been plugged. I
am failing at envisioning such use case, and it would be great if you could
shed some light on it. I am interested in this because one of Quantum's
goals was to provide a clean separation between compute and networking
services. It seems that entanglement between the two it's now crawling
back. Personally, I would let Quantum figure out binding information once
the VIF is plugged, and keep the VIF plugging API as GET only.
While VIF creation is clearly a task which pertains to the compute service,
VIF plugging is arguably borderline, and hence it's more than
understandable that there are different valuable approaches and solutions.

Salvatore

On 7 November 2012 10:08, Gary Kotton <gkotton at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 11/06/2012 11:58 PM, Ian Wells wrote:
>
>> On 6 November 2012 19:39, Gary Kotton<gkotton at redhat.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> GET /network-implementation-**details/<net-id>
>>>
>> A minor quibble, but these commands will probably change the state on
>> the host that you're getting an attachment for for (or, at least, it
>> would the way I would do it - you do the call, and e.g. a bridge pops
>> up and Nova knows where to find it by the return of the call).  If
>> that's the case, it is a POST rather than a GET as you're creating
>> something.
>>
>
> I need to update the blueprint. The idea in general is to have something
> like
>
> GET /port/<id>/binding
> and
> PUT /port/<id>/binding/<something>
>
> This will enable the information to be passed to Quantum.
>
>
>
>> I'm sure you could do it the other way around (GET the details of how
>> to connect to the network and then do the work in Nova to make an
>> endpoint that the hypervisor could use) but I prefer that the work of
>> buggering about with the networking remained entirely within Quantum.
>> This seems eminently sensible for PCI passthrough in particular, where
>> the call would hand over the details of the card to be attached and
>> return that it had been attached - versus bridge creation, where you'd
>> probably say 'give me a bridge' and be told the details of the
>> arbitrarily named bridge you'd just had created.
>>
>
> I would hope that the above PUT command enables Nova to provide this
> information to Quantum.
>
> Each plugin has its way of allocating and managing the resources. Some may
> be done via agents, others may be done directly in Nova. It is allo
> debatible whether this is good or bad. At this stage I would like to
> provide an API that can ensure that we have our bases covered for the
> interim period and the long run.
>
>
>
>> The options seem to be:
>>   - be explicit about which port we're attaching (and, presumably, that
>> a port can only be attached once)
>>   - implicitly create a port iff you attach to a network, use an
>> existing port otherwise
>>   - drop ports altogether, or replace them with these attachments that
>> we're talking about right now (get a 'realised' attachment point and
>> you have effectively added a port to the network, after all).
>>
>>
>
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