Configure neutron agents¶

Configure data-forwarding nodes¶

Configure DHCP agent¶

The DHCP service agent is compatible with all existing plug-ins and is required for all deployments where VMs should automatically receive IP addresses through DHCP.

To install and configure the DHCP agent

1. You must configure the host running the neutron-dhcp-agent as a data forwarding node according to the requirements for your plug-in.

2. Install the DHCP agent:

   # apt-get install neutron-dhcp-agent
   

3. Update any options in the /etc/neutron/dhcp_agent.ini file that depend on the plug-in in use. See the sub-sections.

   Important

   If you reboot a node that runs the DHCP agent, you must run the neutron-ovs-cleanup command before the neutron-dhcp-agent service starts.

   On Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu based systems, the neutron-ovs-cleanup service runs the neutron-ovs-cleanup command automatically. However, on Debian-based systems, you must manually run this command or write your own system script that runs on boot before the neutron-dhcp-agent service starts.

Networking dhcp-agent can use dnsmasq driver which supports stateful and stateless DHCPv6 for subnets created with --ipv6_address_mode set to dhcpv6-stateful or dhcpv6-stateless.

For example:

$ openstack subnet create --ip-version 6 --ipv6-ra-mode dhcpv6-stateful \
  --ipv6-address-mode dhcpv6-stateful --network NETWORK --subnet-range \
  CIDR SUBNET_NAME

$ openstack subnet create --ip-version 6 --ipv6-ra-mode dhcpv6-stateless \
  --ipv6-address-mode dhcpv6-stateless --network NETWORK --subnet-range \
  CIDR SUBNET_NAME

If no dnsmasq process for subnet’s network is launched, Networking will launch a new one on subnet’s dhcp port in qdhcp-XXX namespace. If previous dnsmasq process is already launched, restart dnsmasq with a new configuration.

Networking will update dnsmasq process and restart it when subnet gets updated.

After a certain, configured timeframe, networks uncouple from DHCP agents when the agents are no longer in use. You can configure the DHCP agent to automatically detach from a network when the agent is out of service, or no longer needed.

This feature applies to all plug-ins that support DHCP scaling. For more information, see the DHCP agent configuration options listed in the OpenStack Configuration Reference.

[DEFAULT]
enable_isolated_metadata = True
interface_driver = openvswitch

[DEFAULT]
enable_metadata_network = True
enable_isolated_metadata = True
interface_driver = openvswitch

[DEFAULT]
enabled_isolated_metadata = True
interface_driver = linuxbridge

Configure L3 agent¶

The OpenStack Networking service has a widely used API extension to allow administrators and projects to create routers to interconnect L2 networks, and floating IPs to make ports on private networks publicly accessible.

Many plug-ins rely on the L3 service agent to implement the L3 functionality. However, the following plug-ins already have built-in L3 capabilities:

• Big Switch/Floodlight plug-in, which supports both the open source Floodlight controller and the proprietary Big Switch controller.

  Note

  Only the proprietary BigSwitch controller implements L3 functionality. When using Floodlight as your OpenFlow controller, L3 functionality is not available.

• IBM SDN-VE plug-in

• MidoNet plug-in

• NSX plug-in

• PLUMgrid plug-in

To install the L3 agent for all other plug-ins

1. Install the neutron-l3-agent binary on the network node:

   # apt-get install neutron-l3-agent
   

2. To uplink the node that runs neutron-l3-agent to the external network, create a bridge named br-ex and attach the NIC for the external network to this bridge.

   For example, with Open vSwitch and NIC eth1 connected to the external network, run:

   # ovs-vsctl add-br br-ex
   # ovs-vsctl add-port br-ex eth1
   

   When the br-ex port is added to the eth1 interface, external communication is interrupted. To avoid this, edit the /etc/network/interfaces file to contain the following information:

   ## External bridge
   auto br-ex
   iface br-ex inet static
   address 192.27.117.101
   netmask 255.255.240.0
   gateway 192.27.127.254
   dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8
   
   ## External network interface
   auto eth1
   iface eth1 inet manual
   up ifconfig $IFACE 0.0.0.0 up
   up ip link set $IFACE promisc on
   down ip link set $IFACE promisc off
   down ifconfig $IFACE down
   

   Note

   The external bridge configuration address is the external IP address. This address and gateway should be configured in /etc/network/interfaces.

   After editing the configuration, restart br-ex:

   # ifdown br-ex && ifup br-ex
   

   Do not manually configure an IP address on the NIC connected to the external network for the node running neutron-l3-agent. Rather, you must have a range of IP addresses from the external network that can be used by OpenStack Networking for routers that uplink to the external network. This range must be large enough to have an IP address for each router in the deployment, as well as each floating IP.

3. The neutron-l3-agent uses the Linux IP stack and iptables to perform L3 forwarding and NAT. In order to support multiple routers with potentially overlapping IP addresses, neutron-l3-agent defaults to using Linux network namespaces to provide isolated forwarding contexts. As a result, the IP addresses of routers are not visible simply by running the ip addr list or ifconfig command on the node. Similarly, you cannot directly ping fixed IPs.

   To do either of these things, you must run the command within a particular network namespace for the router. The namespace has the name qrouter-ROUTER_UUID. These example commands run in the router namespace with UUID 47af3868-0fa8-4447-85f6-1304de32153b:

   # ip netns exec qrouter-47af3868-0fa8-4447-85f6-1304de32153b ip addr list
   

   # ip netns exec qrouter-47af3868-0fa8-4447-85f6-1304de32153b ping FIXED_IP
   

   Important

   If you reboot a node that runs the L3 agent, you must run the neutron-ovs-cleanup command before the neutron-l3-agent service starts.

   On Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu based systems, the neutron-ovs-cleanup service runs the neutron-ovs-cleanup command automatically. However, on Debian-based systems, you must manually run this command or write your own system script that runs on boot before the neutron-l3-agent service starts.

How routers are assigned to L3 agents By default, a router is assigned to the L3 agent with the least number of routers (LeastRoutersScheduler). This can be changed by altering the router_scheduler_driver setting in the configuration file.

Configure metering agent¶

The Neutron Metering agent resides beside neutron-l3-agent.

To install the metering agent and configure the node

1. Install the agent by running:

   # apt-get install neutron-metering-agent
   

2. If you use one of the following plug-ins, you need to configure the metering agent with these lines as well:

   • An OVS-based plug-in such as OVS, NSX, NEC, BigSwitch/Floodlight:

     interface_driver = openvswitch
     

   • A plug-in that uses LinuxBridge:

     interface_driver = linuxbridge
     

3. To use the reference implementation, you must set:

   driver = iptables
   

4. Set the service_plugins option in the /etc/neutron/neutron.conf file on the host that runs neutron-server:

   service_plugins = metering
   

   If this option is already defined, add metering to the list, using a comma as separator. For example:

   service_plugins = router,metering
   

Configure Load-Balancer-as-a-Service (LBaaS v2)¶

For the back end, use either Octavia or HAProxy. This example uses Octavia.

To configure LBaaS V2

1. Install Octavia using your distribution’s package manager.

2. Edit the /etc/neutron/neutron_lbaas.conf file and change the service_provider parameter to enable Octavia:

   service_provider = LOADBALANCERV2:Octavia:neutron_lbaas.drivers.octavia.driver.OctaviaDriver:default
   

3. Edit the /etc/neutron/neutron.conf file and add the service_plugins parameter to enable the load-balancing plug-in:

   service_plugins = neutron_lbaas.services.loadbalancer.plugin.LoadBalancerPluginv2
   

   If this option is already defined, add the load-balancing plug-in to the list using a comma as a separator. For example:

   service_plugins = [already defined plugins],neutron_lbaas.services.loadbalancer.plugin.LoadBalancerPluginv2
   

4. Create the required tables in the database:

   # neutron-db-manage --subproject neutron-lbaas upgrade head
   

5. Restart the neutron-server service.

6. Enable load balancing in the Project section of the dashboard.

   Warning

   Horizon panels are enabled only for LBaaSV1. LBaaSV2 panels are still being developed.

   By default, the enable_lb option is True in the local_settings.py file.

   OPENSTACK_NEUTRON_NETWORK = {
       'enable_lb': True,
       ...
   }
   

   Apply the settings by restarting the web server. You can now view the Load Balancer management options in the Project view in the dashboard.

Configure Hyper-V L2 agent¶

Before you install the OpenStack Networking Hyper-V L2 agent on a Hyper-V compute node, ensure the compute node has been configured correctly using these instructions.

To install the OpenStack Networking Hyper-V agent and configure the node

1. Download the OpenStack Networking code from the repository:

   > cd C:\OpenStack\
   > git clone https://git.openstack.org/openstack/neutron
   

2. Install the OpenStack Networking Hyper-V Agent:

   > cd C:\OpenStack\neutron\
   > python setup.py install
   

3. Copy the policy.json file:

   > xcopy C:\OpenStack\neutron\etc\policy.json C:\etc\
   

4. Create the C:\etc\neutron-hyperv-agent.conf file and add the proper configuration options and the Hyper-V related options. Here is a sample config file:

   [DEFAULT]
   control_exchange = neutron
   policy_file = C:\etc\policy.json
   rpc_backend = neutron.openstack.common.rpc.impl_kombu
   rabbit_host = IP_ADDRESS
   rabbit_port = 5672
   rabbit_userid = guest
   rabbit_password = <password>
   logdir = C:\OpenStack\Log
   logfile = neutron-hyperv-agent.log
   
   [AGENT]
   polling_interval = 2
   physical_network_vswitch_mappings = *:YOUR_BRIDGE_NAME
   enable_metrics_collection = true
   
   [SECURITYGROUP]
   firewall_driver = hyperv.neutron.security_groups_driver.HyperVSecurityGroupsDriver
   enable_security_group = true
   

5. Start the OpenStack Networking Hyper-V agent:

   > C:\Python27\Scripts\neutron-hyperv-agent.exe --config-file
   C:\etc\neutron-hyperv-agent.conf
   

Basic operations on agents¶

This table shows examples of Networking commands that enable you to complete basic operations on agents.

Basic operations on Networking agents

See the OpenStack Command-Line Interface Reference for more information on Networking commands.