Network connectivity

The selected server hardware must have the appropriate number of network connections, as well as the right type of network connections, in order to support the proposed architecture. Ensure that, at a minimum, there are at least two diverse network connections coming into each rack.

The selection of form factors or architectures affects the selection of server hardware. Ensure that the selected server hardware is configured to support enough storage capacity (or storage expandability) to match the requirements of selected scale-out storage solution. Similarly, the network architecture impacts the server hardware selection and vice versa.

While each enterprise install is different, the following networks with their proposed bandwidth is highly recommended for a basic production OpenStack install.

Install or OOB network - Typically used by most distributions and provisioning tools as the network for deploying base software to the OpenStack compute nodes. This network should be connected at a minimum of 1Gb and no routing is usually needed.

Internal or Management network - Used as the internal communication network between OpenStack compute and control nodes. Can also be used as a network for iSCSI communication between the compute and iSCSI storage nodes. Again, this should be a minimum of a 1Gb NIC and should be a non-routed network. This interface should be redundant for high availability (HA).

Tenant network - A private network that enables communication between each tenant’s instances. If using flat networking and provider networks, this network is optional. This network should also be isolated from all other networks for security compliance. A 1Gb interface should be sufficient and redundant for HA.

Storage network - A private network which could be connected to the Ceph frontend or other shared storage. For HA purposes this should be a redundant configuration with suggested 10Gb NICs. This network isolates the storage for the instances away from other networks. Under load, this storage traffic could overwhelm other networks and cause outages on other OpenStack services.

(Optional) External or Public network - This network is used to communicate externally from the VMs to the public network space. These addresses are typically handled by the neutron agent on the controller nodes and can also be handled by a SDN other than neutron. However, when using neutron DVR with OVS, this network must be present on the compute node since north and south traffic will not be handled by the controller nodes, but by the compute node itself. For more information on DVR with OVS and compute nodes, see Open vSwitch: High availability using DVR