# -- Background
The Neutron Linux Bridge plugin is a plugin that allows you to manage
connectivity between VMs on hosts that are capable of running a Linux Bridge.
The Neutron Linux Bridge plugin consists of three components:
1) The plugin itself: The plugin uses a database backend (mysql for
now) to store configuration and mappings that are used by the
agent. The mysql server runs on a central server (often the same
host as nova itself).
2) The neutron service host which will be running neutron. This can
be run on the server running nova.
3) An agent which runs on the host and communicates with the host operating
system. The agent gathers the configuration and mappings from
the mysql database running on the neutron host.
The sections below describe how to configure and run the neutron
service with the Linux Bridge plugin.
# -- Python library dependencies
Make sure you have the following package(s) installedi on neutron server
host as well as any hosts which run the agent:
python-configobj
bridge-utils
python-mysqldb
sqlite3
# -- Nova configuration (controller node)
1) Ensure that the neutron network manager is configured in the
nova.conf on the node that will be running nova-network.
network_manager=nova.network.neutron.manager.NeutronManager
# -- Nova configuration (compute node(s))
1) Configure the vif driver, and libvirt/vif type
connection_type=libvirt
libvirt_type=qemu
libvirt_vif_type=ethernet
libvirt_vif_driver=nova.virt.libvirt.vif.NeutronLinuxBridgeVIFDriver
linuxnet_interface_driver=nova.network.linux_net.NeutronLinuxBridgeInterfaceDriver
2) If you want a DHCP server to be run for the VMs to acquire IPs,
add the following flag to your nova.conf file:
neutron_use_dhcp=true
(Note: For more details on how to work with Neutron using Nova, i.e. how to create networks and such,
please refer to the top level Neutron README which points to the relevant documentation.)
# -- Neutron configuration
Make the Linux Bridge plugin the current neutron plugin
- edit neutron.conf and change the core_plugin
core_plugin = neutron.plugins.linuxbridge.lb_neutron_plugin.LinuxBridgePluginV2
# -- Database config.
(Note: The plugin ships with a default SQLite in-memory database configuration,
and can be used to run tests without performing the suggested DB config below.)
The Linux Bridge neutron plugin requires access to a mysql database in order
to store configuration and mappings that will be used by the agent. Here is
how to set up the database on the host that you will be running the neutron
service on.
MySQL should be installed on the host, and all plugins and clients
must be configured with access to the database.
To prep mysql, run:
$ mysql -u root -p -e "create database neutron_linux_bridge"
# log in to mysql service
$ mysql -u root -p
# The Linux Bridge Neutron agent running on each compute node must be able to
# make a mysql connection back to the main database server.
mysql> GRANT USAGE ON *.* to root@'yourremotehost' IDENTIFIED BY 'newpassword';
# force update of authorization changes
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
(Note: If the remote connection fails to MySQL, you might need to add the IP address,
and/or fully-qualified hostname, and/or unqualified hostname in the above GRANT sql
command. Also, you might need to specify "ALL" instead of "USAGE".)
# -- Plugin configuration
- Edit the configuration file:
etc/neutron/plugins/linuxbridge/linuxbridge_conf.ini
Make sure it matches your mysql configuration. This file must be updated
with the addresses and credentials to access the database.
Note: debug and logging information should be updated in etc/neutron.conf
Note: When running the tests, set the connection type to sqlite, and when
actually running the server set it to mysql. At any given time, only one
of these should be active in the conf file (you can comment out the other).
- On the neutron server, network_vlan_ranges must be configured in
linuxbridge_conf.ini to specify the names of the physical networks
managed by the linuxbridge plugin, along with the ranges of VLAN IDs
available on each physical network for allocation to virtual
networks. An entry of the form
"<physical_network>:<vlan_min>:<vlan_max>" specifies a VLAN range on
the named physical network. An entry of the form
"<physical_network>" specifies a named network without making a
range of VLANs available for allocation. Networks specified using
either form are available for adminstrators to create provider flat
networks and provider VLANs. Multiple VLAN ranges can be specified
for the same physical network.
The following example linuxbridge_conf.ini entry shows three
physical networks that can be used to create provider networks, with
ranges of VLANs available for allocation on two of them:
[VLANS]
network_vlan_ranges = physnet1:1000:2999,physnet1:3000:3999,physnet2,physnet3:1:4094
# -- Agent configuration
- Edit the configuration file:
etc/neutron/plugins/linuxbridge/linuxbridge_conf.ini
- Copy neutron/plugins/linuxbridge/agent/linuxbridge_neutron_agent.py
and etc/neutron/plugins/linuxbridge/linuxbridge_conf.ini
to the compute node.
- Copy the neutron.conf file to the compute node
Note: debug and logging information should be updated in etc/neutron.conf
- On each compute node, the network_interface_mappings must be
configured in linuxbridge_conf.ini to map each physical network name
to the physical interface connecting the node to that physical
network. Entries are of the form
"<physical_network>:<physical_interface>". For example, one compute
node may use the following physical_inteface_mappings entries:
[LINUX_BRIDGE]
physical_interface_mappings = physnet1:eth1,physnet2:eth2,physnet3:eth3
while another might use:
[LINUX_BRIDGE]
physical_interface_mappings = physnet1:em3,physnet2:em2,physnet3:em1
$ Run the following:
python linuxbridge_neutron_agent.py --config-file neutron.conf
--config-file linuxbridge_conf.ini
Note that the the user running the agent must have sudo priviliges
to run various networking commands. Also, the agent can be
configured to use neutron-rootwrap, limiting what commands it can
run via sudo. See http://wiki.openstack.org/Packager/Rootwrap for
details on rootwrap.
As an alternative to coping the agent python file, if neutron is
installed on the compute node, the agent can be run as
bin/neutron-linuxbridge-agent.
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