Open Stack

Hi Ivar,

thanks for your interest in Openstack and Neutron.
A few replies inline; I hope you'll find them useful.

Salvatore


On 10 July 2013 02:40, Ivar Lazzaro <ivar at embrane.com> wrote:

>   Hi,****
>
> My name is Ivar Lazzaro, I’m an Italian developer currently employed at
> Embrane.****
>
>
>  Embrane provides L3 to L7 network services, (including routing, load
> balancing, SSL offloads, firewalls and IPsec VPNs), and we have developed a
> Neutron plugin that we would like to share and contribute to Openstack[1].
>

That would be great!
the current policy for Neutron plugins is that each plugin should have a
member of the core team which will act as a 'maintainer'; this figure is
not required to be an 'expert' of the specific plugin technology. His
duties are mainly those of keeping track of bugs/blueprints, review code,
and interact with the developers.

> ****
>
>
>  My experience with OpenStack started with the Essex edition, which I
> deployed and managed as a "user". Embrane leverages any existing form of L2
> to offer connectivity at L3 and above, and therefore our interest in
> contributing to OpenStack grew as L3 (and above) capabilities started to be
> added to Neutron, leading to the realization of a Neutron plugin.****
>
>
>  I'd like to talk about it with you before "blindly" requesting a review,
> and get your feedback and advice in order to improve it at the most!
>

Sounds a very sensible approach, since we're already halfway through the
release cycle, and finding resources for reviewing code might not be the
easiest thing.

> ****
>
>
>  The idea is to provide L3 connectivity in Openstack through our software
> platform, called heleos, obviously using a plugin to follow the Neutron
> workflow.Since we don't provide L2 connectivity (which is part of the core
> APIs as well) our plugin is going to work together with one of the
> existing, which will manage L2 connectivity and share all the information
> needed.****
>
>
>  Therefore, whenever a user chooses to use Embrane's Neutron plugin, he
> specifies one of the supported existing plugins in the configuration file,
> and L2 connectivity will be provided by that specific choice.****
>
> At the current state, for instance, our plugin is able to work with the
> OpenVSwitch's so that:****
>
>
>  -create_network() will call OVS plugin;
>
> -create_port() will call OVS plugin;
>
> -crate_router() will call Embrane's which will use knowledge from the OVS
> plugin in order to provide L3 connectivity.****
>
>
> It looks like your plugin is pretty much a derivative of the OVS plugin,
which replaces the L3 agent with Embrane's heleos.
I think this approach makes some sense, but in the medium/long term you
would like to be able to run your plugin on top of any L2 plugin.

There is a Neutron blueprint for that, and that is
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/neutron/+spec/quantum-l3-routing-plugin
That blueprint is unfortunately a bit stuck at the moment.
It would be good for the whole community to understand whether we can
actually still merge it during the Havana timeframe.


>  and so forth...****
>
> The calls can be asynchronous (using Router "status" in a way similar to
> the LBaaS extension).
>
>
>  Without going too much into details, that's all about the L3 plugin that
> we would like to share. We are also interested in sharing a LBaaS service
> plugin, but I'll do a different blueprint for that one.
>

I think it won't harm pushing your code as a draft on gerrit.

> ****
>
> All your feedback and comments are welcome :)****
>
>
>  Thanks,
>
> Ivar.
>
>
>  [1] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/neutron/+spec/embrane-neutron-plugin
>
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>
>
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