• Proposed name for the project: OpenContrail Virtual Networking for OPNFV
• Proposed name for the repository: ovno
• Project Categories: Collaborative Development

This project will enable OpenContrail to be selected as the virtual networking technology in OPNFV deployments. The following diagram illustrates how the components of an OPNFV stack that includes OpenContrail map onto the ETSI NFV architecture.

The architecture of OpenContrail and details of how its virtual networking works is described in detail in http://www.opencontrail.org/opencontrail-architecture-documentation/.

The main tasks of the project will be integration of OpenContrail artifacts into the OPNFV continuous integration infrastructure, and ensuring support in the various installer projects. It is not planned that OpenContrail source code will be hosted in OPNFV systems, but rather that pre-built packages will be downloaded into the OPNFV artifact repository, and from there integrated into the various installers. Over time, as new versions become available, it will be desirable to be able to choose the OpenContrail version and underlying operating system when OpenContrail is selected in an installer.

The scope of the project is illustrated below.

The OpenContrail Virtual Networking project is described in detail in this presentation opencontrail_for_opnfv_v2.pptx.

OpenContrail supports overlay networking that can be applied in many use cases including:

• Multi-tenant infrastructure as a service
• Dynamic creation and application of network policy
• Creation of service chains and application of network policy to direct traffic through them
• Use of OpenStack Heat templates for application stack and service chain creation
• Load balancing in service chains, reverse flow symmetry, flow stability during scaling
• Use of KVM hypervisor and Docker containers for VNFs
• EVPN and OVSDB integration with switches to support physical servers
• Flow mirroring to a virtualized packet analyzer
• Flow-based analytics on per-network, per-VM and per TCP port basis
• Path visualization for flows between VMs
• Infrastructure health monitoring

The use cases include scenarios, like service chaining, path visualization and flow mirroring, that are not supported in OpenStack natively. The Contrail controller provides support for these via its GUI and API.

It is planned that the initial release of OpenContrail for OPNFV will be included in the Brahmaputra ("B") release of OPNFV.

An OPNFV stack employing the OpenContrail virtual networking option will contain the following components:

• OpenStack (Kilo release)
• OpenContrail controller (release 2.2)
• OpenContrail vRouter
• KVM with QEMU and/or Docker virtualization

The scope of tasks in the project includes the following areas of activity:

• Integration of OpenContrail artifacts into the OPNFV CI environment
• Working with installer projects to enable the OpenContrail stack to be deployed successfully. (May include supply of existing Puppet modules).
• Test scripts to check for deployment success

Related Projects

• Octopus provides an environment in which OPNFV components (platform builds based upon various combinations of components from upstream projects) can be maintained in sync with the upstream projects, and built from those source components into a cohesive set of images and packages, with associated metadata, that form the input artifacts for test and deployment projects.
• Installer projects will provide a capability to quickly deploy a base configuration of components of OPNFV in order to support developer testing of OPNFV stacks and to aid Octopus CI development. OSCAR will use the BGS stack as one of its initially supported stacks in order to exercise the ability to deploy at scale and on multiple sites.
• OpenContrail for OPNFV will follow the release cadencing of the Simultaneous Release project, once it is in place.

Documentation will be provided that describes the OpenStack architecture, components, supported stacks, installation procedure, user interface, APIs, and configuration files.

Project Creation Date:
Project Category: Collaborative project
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• Juniper
• Canonical
• …

• OpenContrail artifacts into Octopus
• Scripts and code into various OPNFV installer projects
• User documentation for OpenContrail OPNFV stack

• The first release is targeted to align to OPNFV Brahmaputra release. Interim downloads may be available ahead of formal release.
• The project will with the OPNFV release cadence.