Remote Device Communication¶
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/dragonflow/+spec/remote-device-communication
This spec proposes the solution of communicating to a remote device which is not managed by Dragonflow.
Problem Description¶
In the common scenario, a VM not only needs to communicate with another VM but also a physical machine, however, the virtual or physical machine may not be managed by Dragonflow, in this spec we call them remote device, if a VM in Dragonflow wants to communicate to remote device, Dragonflow needs to know some info of the remote device.
Usually we would deploy a VTEP for virtual or physical machine in DC network, such as the Openvswitch vxlan port, the VTEP TOR(top of rack) and the physical router which support VTEP, so if Dragonflow knows the correct VTEP IP, VM in Dragonflow could access remote device by the overlay network.
The remote device may belong to one tenant or it has no tenant info at all. It could be managed by another cloud OS and how the remote device knows the location of the VM in Dragonflow and accesses it is out of the scope of this spec.
Proposed Change¶
To resolve the problem, the general idea is we should tell the info of remote device to Dragonflow. We can invoke the Neutron API create_port and provide the info of remote device, plugin will assign a specific chassis name for the remote device and publish the create_port message. After the chassis receives the message, it will create corresponding tunnel port to the remote chassis and install the forwarding rules.
Neutron Plugin¶
When we invoke the create_port Neutron API provided by Neutron plugin in Dragonflow, it will process it:
1. We put the info that indicates the Neutron port is a remote device port into the binding_profile field so that Neutron plugin could recognize it:
- binding_profile = {“port_key”: “remote_port”,
- “host_ip”: remote_chassis_ip}
2. When the Neutron plugin finds it is a remote port by the binding_profile field in the create_port message, it will assign the remote_chassis_ip as the chassis name of the remote port, because the remote_chassis_ip should be unique in DC network. Then it will store the lport in DF DB and publish the message with corresponding topic, if the lport belongs to some tenant, we could use tenant_id as the topic.
DF Local Controller¶
DF local controller will process above notification message:
1. DF local controller will analyse the create_port message and find it is a remote device port by the specific chassis name, and also it will fetch the remote tunnel ip by the chassis name.
2. Local controller will check whether local chassis has the tunnel port from itself to the specific remote chassis, if not, it will create the tunnel port and establish the tunnel to the remote chassis.
3. After the tunnel port has been created, local controller will notify the create_lport message to Apps, it will be considered a normal remote port as in current implementation.
On the other hand, when the remote device port is deleted from local cache, it means there are no need to communicate to the remote chassis anymore for the local controller, it should delete the corresponding tunnel port and forwarding rules.