Welcome to networking-generic-switch’s documentation!

Networking-generic-switch Neutron ML2 driver

This is a Modular Layer 2 Neutron Mechanism driver. The mechanism driver is responsible for applying configuration information to hardware equipment. GenericSwitch provides a pluggable framework to implement functionality required for use-cases like OpenStack Ironic multi-tenancy mode. It abstracts applying changes to all switches managed by this ML2 plugin and handling local_link_information field of Neutron port.

Supported Devices

  • Cisco 300-series switches
  • Cisco IOS switches
  • Huawei switches
  • OpenVSwitch
  • Arista EOS
  • Dell (S4810)
  • Brocade ICX (FastIron)

This Mechanism Driver architecture allows easily to add more devices of any type.

OpenStack Neutron v2.0 => ML2 plugin => Generic Mechanism Driver => Device plugin

As example plugins, Cisco IOS and Linux OpenVSwitch are provided. These device plugins use Netmiko library, which in turn uses Paramiko library to access and configure the switches via SSH protocol.

Configuration

In order to use this mechanism the generic configuration file needs to be created/updated with the appropriate configuration information.

Switch configuration format:

[genericswitch:<switch name>]
device_type = <netmiko device type>
ip = <IP address of switch>
port = <ssh port>
username = <credential username>
password = <credential password>
key_file = <ssh key file>
secret = <enable secret>

Here is an example of /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/ml2_conf_genericswitch.ini for the Cisco 300 series device:

[genericswitch:sw-hostname]
device_type = netmiko_cisco_s300
username = admin
password = password
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>

for the Cisco IOS device:

[genericswitch:sw-hostname]
device_type = netmiko_cisco_ios
username = admin
password = password
secret = secret
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>

for the Huawei VRPV3 or VRPV5 device:

[genericswitch:sw-hostname]
device_type = netmiko_huawei
username = admin
password = password
port = 8222
secret = secret
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>

for the Huawei VRPV8 device:

[genericswitch:sw-hostname]
device_type = netmiko_huawei_vrpv8
username = admin
password = password
port = 8222
secret = secret
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>

for the Arista EOS device:

[genericswitch:arista-hostname]
device_type = netmiko_arista_eos
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>
username = admin
key_file = /opt/data/arista_key

for the Dell device:

[genericswitch:dell-hostname]
device_type = netmiko_dell_force10
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>
username = admin
password = password
secret = secret

for the Brocade FastIron (ICX) device:

[genericswitch:hostname-for-fast-iron]
device_type = netmiko_brocade_fastiron
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>
username = admin
password = password

Additionally the GenericSwitch mechanism driver needs to be enabled from the ml2 config file /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/ml2_conf.ini:

[ml2]
tenant_network_types = vlan
type_drivers = local,flat,vlan,gre,vxlan
mechanism_drivers = openvswitch,genericswitch
...
...

(Re)start neutron-server specifying this additional configuration file:

neutron-server \
    --config-file /etc/neutron/neutron.conf \
    --config-file /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/ml2_conf.ini \
    --config-file /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/ml2_conf_genericswitch.ini

Indices and tables