OVS Driver and Agent for Symmetric Port Chains

Include the URL of your launchpad blueprint:

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/networking-sfc/+spec/symmetric-port-chain-ovs-agent

This specification describes OVS driver and agent enhancements to support symmetric Port Chains.

Problem Description

Work to add the symmetric parameter to the Port Chain API [1] is in progress. This describes the extensions to the networking-sfc OVS driver and agent to support symmetric Port Chain paths.

Proposed Changes

Two port chain paths are created for a symmetric Port Chain: one path for the forward direction and one for the reverse direction. The SFs in the reverse path (from destination to source) are traversed in reverse order to the SFs in the forward path (from source to destination).

Forward path: SF1 … SFn

Reverse path: SFn … SF1

A symmetric Port Chain is defined with the ‘symmetric’ attribute. Both the source and destination Logical Ports must be defined for a symmetric Port Chain. If a Port Chain terminates externally via a vrouter the vrouter port attached to the local subnet is used as the destination Logical Port. When a symmetric Port Chain is deleted both the forward and reverse paths are deleted.

The steering of chain traffic in the data-plane ensures symmetry:

  • The source Logical Port in the flow-classifier is used to install OVS rules to match traffic for the forward path. The destination Logical Port in the flow-classifier is used to install OVS rules to match traffic for the reverse path.
  • Rules must be installed so that the SFs in the reverse path are traversed in reverse order to that of the forward path.
  • Each Port Pair Group must have a Load Balancer pair: one for the forward direction and the other for the reverse direction. In addition, to ensure that traffic in the forward and reverse directions is delivered to the same SF in a Port Pair Group, these LB pairs must use symmetric hash functions.

For symmetric hashing, the source and destination fields from packet header used in the hash function of the reverse LB must be the reverse of the packet header fields used in the hash function of the forward LB. If a source field, such as the source IP address, is used as a hash field in the forward direction, the corresponding destination field, the destination IP address, must be used as the hash field in the reverse direction.

The example below shows a symmetric Port Chain that has a forward path and a symmetric reverse path. The Port Chain transits Port Pair Group 1 and Port Pair Group 2. PPG1 consists of service functions SF1a - SF1c, and PPG2 has service functions SF2a - SF2d.

Classification rule CLf matches traffic from the source Logical Port and steers it to the forward path. Classification rule CLr matches traffic from the destination Logical Port and steers it to the reverse path.

Port Pair Group 1 has a pair of Load Balancers, LB1f to load balance traffic in the forward direction, and LB1r to load balance traffic in the reverse direction. Port Pair Group 2 also has a pair of Load Balancers, LB2f and LB2r.

LB1f hashes a certain forward traffic flow to SF1c, and LB1r, using symmetric hashing, hashes the reverse traffic for the same flow to the same SF, SF1c. Similarly, LB2f hashes that forward traffic flow to SF2a, and LB2r hashes the reverse traffic for the same flow to SF2a.

                      Port Pair           Port Pair
                       Group 1            Group 2
     Reverse path
  ...................  +----+              +----+     Forward path
  .                  . |SF1a|        ----->|SF2a|-----------------------
  v                  . |    |       | +----|    |<....                  |
+---+  +---+----+    . +----+   ....|.|LB1r+----+    .                  |
|VM1|->|CLf|LB1f|--  . |SF1b|   .   | +----|SF2b|    .                  v
+---+  +---+----+  | . |    |   .   |      |    |    .   +----+---+   +---+
                   | . +----+   .   |      +----|    ....|LB2r|CLr|<..|VM2|
                   | ..|SF1c|<...   |      |SF2c|        +----+---+   +---+
                    -->|    |----+  |      |    |
                       +----|LB2f|--       +----+
                            +----+         |SF2d|
                                           |    |
                                           +----+

The Load Balancers of the LB pairs may reside on different Compute Nodes. For example, LB1f may be hosted on one Compute Node and LB1r on another Compute Node.

Alternatives

None

Data model impact

None

REST API impact

None

Security impact

None

Notifications impact

None

Other end user impact

None

Performance Impact

None

Other deployer impact

None.

Developer impact

None.

Implementation

Assignee(s)

Work Items

  1. Extend ‘networking-sfc’ OVS driver to support symmetric port chains.
  2. Add unit tests.
  3. Add tempest tests.
  4. Update documentation.

Dependencies

None

Testing

Unit tests and function tests will be added.

Documentation Impact

None