openstack-manuals/doc/admin-guide/source/shared-file-systems-network-plugins.rst

Network plug-ins

The Shared File Systems service architecture defines an abstraction layer for network resource provisioning and allowing administrators to choose from a different options for how network resources are assigned to their tenants’ networked storage. There are a set of network plug-ins that provide a variety of integration approaches with the network services that are available with OpenStack.

The Shared File Systems service may need a network resource provisioning if share service with specified driver works in mode, when a share driver manages lifecycle of share servers on its own. This behavior is defined by a flag driver_handles_share_servers in share service configuration. When driver_handles_share_servers is set to True, a share driver will be called to create share servers for shares using information provided within a share network. This information will be provided to one of the enabled network plug-ins that will handle reservation, creation and deletion of network resources including IP addresses and network interfaces.

What network plug-ins are available?

There are three different network plug-ins and five python classes in the Shared File Systems service:

1. Network plug-in for using the OpenStack Networking service. It allows to use any network segmentation that the Networking service supports. It is up to each share driver to support at least one network segmentation type.

   1. manila.network.neutron.neutron_network_plugin.NeutronNetworkPlugin. This is a default network plug-in. It requires the neutron_net_id and the neutron_subnet_id to be provided when defining the share network that will be used for the creation of share servers. The user may define any number of share networks corresponding to the various physical network segments in a tenant environment.
   2. manila.network.neutron.neutron_network_plugin. NeutronSingleNetworkPlugin. This is a simplification of the previous case. It accepts values for neutron_net_id and neutron_subnet_id from the manila.conf configuration file and uses one network for all shares.

   When only a single network is needed, the NeutronSingleNetworkPlugin (1.b) is a simple solution. Otherwise NeutronNetworkPlugin (1.a) should be chosen.

2. Network plug-in for working with OpenStack Networking from the Compute service. It supports either flat networks or VLAN-segmented networks.

   1. manila.network.nova_network_plugin.NovaNetworkPlugin. This plug-in serves the networking needs when Nova networking is configured in the cloud instead of Neutron. It requires a single parameter, nova_net_id.
   2. manila.network.nova_network_plugin.NovaSingleNetworkPlugin. This plug-in works the same way as manila.network.nova_network_plugin.NovaNetworkPlugin, except it takes nova_net_id from the Shared File Systems service configuration file and creates the share servers using only one network.

   When only a single network is needed, the NovaSingleNetworkPlugin (2.b) is a simple solution. Otherwise NovaNetworkPlugin (2.a) should be chosen.

3. Network plug-in for specifying networks independently from OpenStack networking services.

   1. manila.network.standalone_network_plugin.StandaloneNetworkPlugin. This plug-in uses a pre-existing network that is available to the manila-share host. This network may be handled either by OpenStack or be created independently by any other means. The plug-in supports any type of network - flat and segmented. As above, it is completely up to the share driver to support the network type for which the network plug-in is configured.

Note

These network plug-ins were introduced in the OpenStack Kilo release. In the OpenStack Juno version, only NeutronNetworkPlugin is available.

More information about network plug-ins can be found in Manila developer documentation