OpenContrail Virtual Networking User Guide¶
1. OpenContrail in OPNFV¶
1.1. Introduction¶
OpenContrail provides virtual networking in OpenStack by providing a complete implementation of the Neutron networking API in a combination of a controller and a forwarding element (vRouter) that is installed in place of Linux bridge Open vSwitch. OpenContrail uses XMPP for the management and control plane between the controller and the vRouters, and uses BGP for the control plane to physical devices.
OpenContrail uses overlay networking between vRouters
to deliver highly scalable, multi-tenant connectivity with fine-grained network policy and many L2 and L3 networking features not available in the standard Neutron API, such as, ARP-proxy, ACLs, ECMP load-balancing, service chaining, port mirroring. In addition, OpenContrail provides analytics based on collection of metrics from the virtual and physical infrastructure.
More details on the OpenContrail architecture and its operation can be found at http://www.opencontrail.org/opencontrail-architecture-documentation/.
1.2. Installation¶
In the Euphrates release of OPNFV, OpenContrail installation is supported using the JOID installer. Installation instructions are provided in that project’s documentation. In summary, following download and deployment of JOID, OpenContrail can be deployed using the following command in the <OPNFV_DIR>/joid/ci directory.
./deploy.sh -o ocata -t nonha|ha -s ocl -d xenial -l custom -m openstack
where “nonha” or “ha” indicate if a single instance, or highly available multi-instance OpenStack/OpenContrail environment should be deployed.
1.3. Using OpenContrail¶
The OpenContrail GUI is accessed at <public_ip>:8080 where “public_ip” is the IP address that is used to access OpenStack services.
The OpenContrail REST API is found at <public_ip>:8082. Documentation for the API can be found at:
Python libraries are available for OpenContrail and their use is described at:
- The OpenContrail controller is deployed in docker containers that run on the corresponding
- juju services (contrail-controller, contrail-analytics, contrail-analyticsdb). This means
that OpenContrail command line utilities need to be accessed using using “docker exec”. E.g. in order to check the status of an OpenContrail cluster, issue the following command from the Juju jumphost
$ juju ssh contrail-controller/0 “sudo docker exec contrail-controller contrail-status” == Contrail Control == contrail-control: active contrail-named: active contrail-dns: active contrail-control-nodemgr: active == Contrail Config == contrail-api: active contrail-schema: active contrail-svc-monitor: active contrail-device-manager: active contrail-config-nodemgr: active == Contrail Web UI == contrail-webui: active contrail-webui-middleware: active == Contrail Support Services == rabbitmq-server: active (disabled on boot) zookeeper: active Connection to 172.16.50.153 closed.
Note that due to the distributed containerized deployment that is used in Juju, the contrail-status command only shows the status of services running on that node. So the same command issued to a contrail-analytics node yields:
$ juju ssh contrail-analytics/0 “sudo docker exec contrail-analytics contrail-status” == Contrail Analytics == contrail-collector: active contrail-analytics-api: active contrail-query-engine: active contrail-alarm-gen: active contrail-snmp-collector: active contrail-topology: active contrail-analytics-nodemgr: active Connection to 172.16.50.153 closed.
A set of command line python utilities are provided that implement most OpenContrail features. These are located at /opt/contail/utils. Since the nova compute nodes have the contrail utilities installed in the base operating system, it can be more convenient to run commands on these types of nodes after logging in using “juju ssh nova/compute/0”.
2. OpenContrail Community Resources¶
The OpenContrail main web site is at www.opencontrail.org.
There are various mailing lists that are used by community members to get answers about deployment and operation of OpenContrail. The mailing lists can be joined at http://www.opencontrail.org/newsletter-and-mailing-lists/
