openstack-manuals/doc/install-guide/section_neutron-concepts.xml
Joseph Robinson 25d19d243f Editing Neutron Concepts
Sentence and paragraph structure edits, and an additional
heading to review the Neutron Concept section.

Change-Id: I8328e7ae5d36c1f1aa365ed01a0ffee4b759229f
backport: none
Implements: blueprint installation-guide-improvements
2014-06-04 13:21:27 +10:00

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3.6 KiB
XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<section xml:id="neutron-concepts"
xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="5.0">
<title>Networking concepts</title>
<para>OpenStack Networking (neutron) manages all of the networking
facets for the Virtual Networking Infrastructure (VNI) in your
OpenStack environment. OpenStack Networking also manages the access
layer aspects of the Physical Networking Infrastructure (PNI).
Tenants can create advanced virtual network topologies using
OpenStack Networking. These topologies include services such as
<glossterm baseform="firewall">firewalls</glossterm>,
<glossterm baseform="load balancer">load balancers</glossterm>, and
<glossterm baseform="virtual private network (VPN)">
virtual private networks (VPNs)</glossterm>.</para>
<para>Networking provides the following object abstractions: networks,
routers, and subnets. Each has a functionality that mimics its
physical counterpart: networks contain subnets, and routers route
traffic between different subnet and networks.</para>
<para>Each router has one gateway that connects to a network, and many
interfaces connected to subnets. Subnets can access machines on
other subnets connected to the same router.</para>
<para>Any given Networking set up has at least one external network.
This external network, unlike the other networks, is not solely a
virtually defined network. It instead provides a view into a slice
of the network accessible outside the OpenStack installation, which
is the outside network. IP addresses on the external network are
accessible by anybody physically on the outside network. DHCP is
disabled on this network.</para>
<para>Machines can access the outside network through the gateway
for the router. For the outside network to access VMs, and for VM's
to access the outside network, routers between the networks are
needed.</para>
<para>In addition to external networks, any Networking set up has one
or more internal networks. These software-defined networks connect
directly to the VMs. Only the VMs on any given internal network,
or those on subnets connected through interfaces to a similar
router, can access VMs connected to that network directly.</para>
<para>Additionally, you can allocate IP addresses on external
networks to ports on the internal network. Whenever something is
connected to a subnet, that connection is called a port.You can
associate external network IP addresses with ports to VMs.
This way, entities on the outside network can access VMs.</para>
<para>Networking also supports <emphasis role="italic">security
groups</emphasis>, which enable administrators to define
firewall rules in groups. A VM can belong to one or more
security groups. Networking applies the rules in those security
groups to block or unblock ports, port ranges, or traffic types
for that VM.</para>
<simplesect><title>Networking plug-ins</title>
<para>Each plug-in that Networking uses has its own concepts. These
plug-in concepts are not vital to operating Networking.
Understanding these concepts can help you set up the Openstack
Networking service, however. All Networking installations use a core
plug-in and a security group plug-in (or just the No-Op security
group plug-in). Additionally, Firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) and
Load-balancing-as-a-service (LBaaS) plug-ins are available.</para>
</simplesect>
</section>