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Agent extensions
All reference agents utilize a common extension mechanism that allows for the introduction and enabling of a core resource extension without needing to change agent code. This mechanism allows multiple agent extensions to be run by a single agent simultaneously. The mechanism may be especially interesting to third parties whose extensions lie outside the neutron tree.
Under this framework, an agent may expose its API to each of its extensions thereby allowing an extension to access resources internal to the agent. At layer 2, for instance, upon each port event the agent is then able to trigger a handle_port method in its extensions.
Each extension is referenced through a stevedore entry point defined within a specific namespace. For example, L2 extensions are referenced through the neutron.agent.l2.extensions namespace.
The relevant modules are:
- neutron.agent.agent_extension: This module defines an abstract extension interface for all agent extensions across L2 and L3.
- neutron.agent.l2.agent_extension:
- neutron.agent.l3.agent_extension: These modules subclass neutron.agent.agent_extension.AgentExtension and define a layer-specific abstract extension interface.
- neutron.agent.agent_extensions_manager: This module contains a manager that allows extensions to load themselves at runtime.
- neutron.agent.l2.l2_extensions_manager:
- neutron.agent.l3.l3_extensions_manager: Each of these modules passes core resource events to loaded extensions.
Agent API object
Every agent can pass an "agent API object" into its extensions in order to expose its internals to them in a controlled way. To accommodate different agents, each extension may define a consume_api() method that will receive this object.
This agent API object is part of neutron's public interface for third parties. All changes to the interface will be managed in a backwards-compatible way.
At the moment, only the L2 Open vSwitch agent provides an agent API
object to extensions. See L2 agent extensions <agent_extensions>.