openstack-manuals/doc/install-guide/section_neutron-concepts.xml
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<section xml:id="install-neutron"
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xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" version="5.0">
<title>Neutron concepts</title>
<para>Like Nova Networking, Neutron manages software-defined
networking for your OpenStack installation. However, unlike Nova
Networking, you can configure Neutron for advanced virtual network
topologies, such as per-tenant private networks and more.</para>
<para>Neutron has the following object abstractions: networks,
subnets, and routers. Each has functionality that mimics its
physical counterpart: networks contain subnets, and routers route
traffic between different subnet and networks.</para>
<para>Any given Neutron set up has at least one external network.
This network, unlike the other networks, is not merely a virtually
defined network. Instead, it represents the view into a slice of
the external network that is accessible outside the OpenStack
installation. IP addresses on the Neutron external network are
accessible by anybody physically on the outside network. Because
this network merely represents a slice of the outside network,
DHCP is disabled on this network.</para>
<para>In addition to external networks, any Neutron 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>For the outside network to access VMs, and vice versa, routers
between the networks are needed. Each router has one gateway that
is connected to a network and many interfaces that are connected
to subnets. Like a physical router, subnets can access machines on
other subnets that are connected to the same router, and machines
can access the outside network through the gateway for the
router.</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>Neutron also supports <emphasis role="italic">security
groups</emphasis>. Security groups enable administrators to
define firewall rules in groups. A VM can belong to one or more
security groups, and Neutron applies the rules in those security
groups to block or unblock ports, port ranges, or traffic types
for that VM.</para>
<para>Each plug-in that Neutron uses has its own concepts. While not
vital to operating Neutron, understanding these concepts can help
you set up Neutron. All Neutron 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>
<section xml:id="concepts-neutron.openvswitch">
<title>Open vSwitch concepts</title>
<para>The Open vSwitch plug-in is one of the most popular core
plug-ins. Open vSwitch configurations consists of bridges and
ports. Ports represent connections to other things, such as
physical interfaces and patch cables. Packets from any given
port on a bridge are shared with all other ports on that bridge.
Bridges can be connected through Open vSwitch virtual patch
cables or through Linux virtual Ethernet cables
(<literal>veth</literal>). Additionally, bridges appear as
network interfaces to Linux, so you can assign IP addresses to
them.</para>
<para>In Neutron, the integration bridge, called
<literal>br-int</literal>, connects directly to the VMs and
associated services. The external bridge, called
<literal>br-ex</literal>, connects to the external network.
Finally, the VLAN configuration of the Open vSwitch plug-in uses
bridges associated with each physical network.</para>
<para>In addition to defining bridges, Open vSwitch has OpenFlow,
which enables you to define networking flow rules. Certain
configurations use these rules to transfer packets between
VLANs.</para>
<para>Finally, some configurations of Open vSwitch use network
namespaces that enable Linux to group adapters into unique
namespaces that are not visible to other namespaces, which
allows the same network node to manage multiple Neutron
routers.</para>
<para>With Open vSwitch, you can use two different technologies to
create the virtual networks: GRE or VLANs.</para>
<para>Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) is the technology used
in many VPNs. It wraps IP packets to create entirely new packets
with different routing information. When the new packet reaches
its destination, it is unwrapped, and the underlying packet is
routed. To use GRE with Open vSwitch, Neutron creates GRE
tunnels. These tunnels are ports on a bridge and enable bridges
on different systems to act as though they were one bridge,
which allows the compute and network nodes to act as one for the
purposes of routing.</para>
<para>Virtual LANs (VLANs), on the other hand, use a special
modification to the Ethernet header. They add a 4-byte VLAN tag
that ranges from 1 to 4094 (the 0 tag is special, and the 4095
tag, made of all ones, is equivalent to an untagged packet).
Special NICs, switches, and routers know how to interpret the
VLAN tags, as does Open vSwitch. Packets tagged for one VLAN are
only shared with other devices configured to be on that VLAN,
even though all devices are on the same physical
network.</para>
<para>The most common security group driver used with Open vSwitch
is the Hybrid IPTables/Open vSwitch plug-in. It uses a
combination for IPTables and OpenFlow rules. Use the IPTables
tool to create firewalls and set up NATs on Linux. This tool
uses a complex rule system and chains of rules to accommodate
the complex rules required by Neutron security groups.</para>
</section>
</section>