Neutron is a key component of openstack, through which all network traffic flows. Understanding neutron's components is key to effectively operate and troubleshoot openstack deployments. In this presentation, we will focus on explaining the key parts of openstack neutron and how they interact.
The presentation will detail how packets flow inbound/outbound to/from a tenant instance. It will explain the functionality of different pieces of neutron and introduce the audience to where L3 and L2 routing/switching decisions are made for traffic. This will include explaining the functionality of neutron agents (ml2, L3, dhcp & briefly metadata) and how they are physically deployed in an openstack environment ( network namspaces, dnsmasq...). The presentation will beirfly cover network namespaces in linux
The presentation will end with a live demo of tracing an instance traffic inbound/outbound to give the audience a hands-on experience and to solidify the understanding
The presentation will focus on explaining neutron, and mapping neutron components to native linux technologies/services (network namespaces, dnsmasq, linux bridge...) The attendes should expect to learn
- An understanding of neutron key componenets (neutron-server & agents) and how they interact
- Network namespaces in Linux
- How traffic flows from and to instances in openstack (tap devices, linux bridges..)
- How routers are deployed in openstack using the l3-agent (network namespaces creation and routing rules)
- How dhcp works within openstack using dnsmasq
