24 KiB
OVN BGP Agent: Design of the BGP Driver
Purpose
The purpose of this document is to present the design decision behind the BGP Driver for the Networking OVN BGP agent.
The main purpose of adding support for BGP is to be able to expose Virtual Machines (VMs) and Load Balancers (LBs) IPs through BGP dynamic protocol when they either have a Floating IP (FIP) associated or are booted/created on a provider network -- also in tenant networks if a flag is enabled.
Overview
With the increment of virtualized/containerized workloads it is becoming more and more common to use pure layer-3 Spine and Leaf network deployments at datacenters. There are several benefits of this, such as reduced complexity at scale, reduced failures domains, limiting broadcast traffic, among others.
The OVN BGP Agent is a Python based daemon that runs on each node (e.g., OpenStack controllers and/or compute nodes). It connects to the OVN SouthBound DataBase (OVN SB DB) to detect the specific events it needs to react to, and then leverages FRR to expose the routes towards the VMs, and kernel networking capabilities to redirect the traffic arriving on the nodes to the OVN overlay.
Note
Note it is only intended for the N/S traffic, the E/W traffic will work exactly the same as before, i.e., VMs are connected through geneve tunnels.
The agent provides a multi-driver implementation that allows you to
configure it for specific infrastructure running on top of OVN, for
instance OpenStack or Kubernetes/OpenShift. This simple design allows
the agent to implement different drivers, depending on what OVN SB DB
events are being watched (watchers examples at
ovn_bgp_agent/drivers/openstack/watchers/
), and what
actions are triggered in reaction to them (drivers examples at
ovn_bgp_agent/drivers/openstack/XXXX_driver.py
,
implementing the ovn_bgp_agent/drivers/driver_api.py
).
A driver implements the support for BGP capabilities. It ensures both
VMs and LBs on providers networks or with Floating IPs associated can be
exposed throug BGP. In addition, VMs on tenant networks can be also
exposed if the expose_tenant_network
configuration option
is enabled. To control what tenant networks are exposed another flag can
be used: address_scopes
. If not set, all the tenant
networks will be exposed, while if it is configured with a (set of)
address_scopes, only the tenant networks whose address_scope matches
will be exposed.
A common driver API is defined exposing the next methods:
expose_ip
andwithdraw_ip
: used to expose/withdraw IPs for local OVN ports.expose_remote_ip
andwithdraw_remote_ip
: use to expose/withdraw IPs through another node when the VM/Pod are running on a different node. For example for VMs on tenant networks where the traffic needs to be injected through the OVN router gateway port.expose_subnet
andwithdraw_subnet
: used to expose/withdraw subnets through the local node.
Proposed Solution
To support BGP functionality the OVN BGP Agent includes a driver that
performs the extra steps required for exposing the IPs through BGP on
the right nodes and steering the traffic to/from the node from/to the
OVN overlay. In order to configure which driver to use, one should set
the driver
configuration option in the
bgp-agent.conf
file.
This driver requires a watcher to react to the BGP-related events. In
this case, the BGP actions will be trigger by events related to
Port_Binding
and Load_Balancer
OVN SB DB
tables. The information in those tables gets modified by actions related
to VMs or LBs creation/deletion, as well as FIPs
association/disassociation to/from them.
Then, the agent performs some actions in order to ensure those VMs are reachable through BGP:
- Traffic between nodes or BGP Advertisement: These are the actions needed to expose the BGP routes and make sure all the nodes know how to reach the VM/LB IP on the nodes.
- Traffic within a node or redirecting traffic to/from OVN overlay: These are the actions needed to redirect the traffic to/from a VM to the OVN neutron networks, when traffic reaches the node where the VM is or in their way out of the node.
The code for the BGP driver is located at
drivers/openstack/ovn_bgp_driver.py
, and its associated
watcher can be found at
drivers/openstack/watchers/bgp_watcher.py
.
OVN SB DB Events
The watcher associated to the BGP driver detect the relevant events on the OVN SB DB to call the driver functions to configure BGP and linux kernel networking accordingly. The folloging events are watched and handled by the BGP watcher:
VMs or LBs created/deleted on provider networks
FIPs association/disassociation to VMs or LBs
VMs or LBs created/deleted on tenant networks (if the
expose_tenant_networks
configuration option is enabled, or if theexpose_ipv6_gua_tenant_networks
for only exposing IPv6 GUA ranges)Note
If
expose_tenant_networks
flag is enabled, it does not matter the status ofexpose_ipv6_gua_tenant_networks
, as all the tenant IPs will be advertized.
The BGP watcher detects OVN Southbound Database events at the
Port_Binding
and Load_Balancer
tables. It
creates new event classes named PortBindingChassisEvent
and
OVNLBMemberEvent
, that all the events watched for BGP use
as the base (inherit from).
The specific defined events to react to are:
PortBindingChassisCreatedEvent
: Detects when a port of type""
(empty double-qoutes),virtual
, orchassisredirect
gets attached to the OVN chassis where the agent is running. This is the case for VM or amphora LB ports on the provider networks, VM or amphora LB ports on tenant networks with a FIP associated, and neutron gateway router ports (CR-LRPs). It callsexpose_ip
driver method to perform the needed actions to expose it.PortBindingChassisDeletedEvent
: Detects when a port of type""
(empty double-quotes),virtual
, orchassisredirect
gets detached from the OVN chassis where the agent is running. This is the case for VM or amphora LB ports on the provider networks, VM or amphora LB ports on tenant networks with a FIP associated, and neutron gateway router ports (CR-LRPs). It callswithdraw_ip
driver method to perform the needed actions to withdraw the exposed BGP route.FIPSetEvent
: Detects when a patch port gets its nat_addresses field updated (e.g., action related to FIPs NATing). If that so, and the associated VM port is on the local chassis the event is processed by the agent and the required ip rule gets created and also the IP is (BGP) exposed. It callsexpose_ip
driver method, including the associated_port information, to perform the required actions.FIPUnsetEvent
: Same as previous, but when the nat_address field get an IP deleted. It callswithdraw_ip
driver method to perform the required actions.SubnetRouterAttachedEvent
: Detects when a patch port gets created. This means a subnet is attached to a router. In theexpose_tenant_network
case, if the chassis is the one having the cr-lrp port for that router where the port is getting created, then the event is processed by the agent and the needed actions (ip rules and routes, and ovs rules) for exposing the IPs on that network are performed. This event calls the driver_apiexpose_subnet
. The same happens ifexpose_ipv6_gua_tenant_networks
is used, but then, the IPs are only exposed if they are IPv6 global.SubnetRouterDetachedEvent
: Same as previous one, but for the deletion of the port. It callswithdraw_subnet
.TenantPortCreateEvent
: Detects when a port of type""
(empty double-quotes) orvirtual
gets updated. If that port is not on a provider network, and the chasis where the event is processed has the LogicalRouterPort for the network and the OVN router gateway port where the network is connected to, then the event is processed and the actions to expose it through BGP are triggered. It calls theexpose_remote_ip
as in this case the IPs are exposed through the node with the OVN router gateway port, instead of where the VM is.TenantPortDeleteEvent
: Same as previous one, but for the deletion of the port. It callswithdraw_remote_ip
.OVNLBMemberUpdateEvent
: This event is required to handle the OVN load balancers created on the provider networks. It detects when new datapaths are added/removed to/from theLoad_Balancer
entries. This happens when members are added/removed -- their respective datapaths are added into theLoad_Balancer
table entry. The event is only processed in the nodes with the relevant OVN router gateway ports, as it is where it needs to get exposed to be injected into OVN overlay. It callsexpose_ovn_lb_on_provider
when the second datapath is added (first one is the one belonging to the VIP (i.e., the provider network), while the second one belongs to the load balancer member -- note all the load balancer members are expected to be connected through the same router to the provider network). And it callswithdraw_ovn_lb_on_provider
when that member gets deleted (only one datapath left) or the event type is ROW_DELETE, meaning the whole load balancer is deleted.
Driver Logic
The BGP driver is in charge of the networking configuration ensuring
that VMs and LBs on provider networks or with FIPs can be reached
through BGP (N/S traffic). In addition, if
expose_tenant_networks
flag is enabled, VMs in tenant
networks should be reachable too -- although instead of directly in the
node they are created, through one of the network gateway chassis nodes.
The same happens with expose_ipv6_gua_tenant_networks
but
only for IPv6 GUA ranges. In addition, if the config option
address_scopes
is set only the tenant networks with
matching corresponding address_scope will be exposed.
To accomplish this, it needs to ensure that:
- VM and LBs IPs can be advertized in a node where the traffic could be injected into the OVN overlay, in this case either the node hosting the VM or the node where the router gateway port is scheduled (see limitations subsection).
- Once the traffic reaches the specific node, the traffic is redirected to the OVN overlay by leveraging kernel networking.
BGP Advertisement
The OVN BGP Agent is in charge of triggering FRR (ip routing protocol suite for Linux which includes protocol daemons for BGP, OSPF, RIP, among others) to advertise/withdraw directly connected routes via BGP. To do that, when the agent starts, it ensures that:
FRR local instance is reconfigured to leak routes for a new VRF. To do that it uses
vtysh shell
. It connects to the existsing FRR socket (--vty_socket
option) and executes the next commands, passing them through a file (-c FILE_NAME
option):LEAK_VRF_TEMPLATE = ''' router bgp {{ bgp_as }} address-family ipv4 unicast import vrf {{ vrf_name }} exit-address-family address-family ipv6 unicast import vrf {{ vrf_name }} exit-address-family router bgp {{ bgp_as }} vrf {{ vrf_name }} bgp router-id {{ bgp_router_id }} address-family ipv4 unicast redistribute connected exit-address-family address-family ipv6 unicast redistribute connected exit-address-family '''
There is a VRF created (the one leaked in the previous step), by default with name
bgp_vrf
.There is a dummy interface type (by default named
bgp-nic
), associated to the previously created VRF device.Ensure ARP/NDP is enabled at OVS provider bridges by adding an IP to it
Then, to expose the VMs/LB IPs as they are created (or upon
initialization or re-sync), since the FRR configuration has the
redistribute connected
option enabled, the only action
needed to expose it (or withdraw it) is to add it (or remove it) from
the bgp-nic
dummy interface. Then it relies on Zebra to do
the BGP advertisemant, as Zebra detects the addition/deletion of the IP
on the local interface and advertises/withdraw the route:
$ ip addr add IPv4/32 dev bgp-nic $ ip addr add IPv6/128 dev bgp-nic
Note
As we also want to be able to expose VM connected to tenant networks (when
expose_tenant_networks
orexpose_ipv6_gua_tenant_networks
configuration options are enabled), there is a need to expose the Neutron router gateway port (CR-LRP on OVN) so that the traffic to VMs on tenant networks is injected into OVN overlay through the node that is hosting that port.
Traffic Redirection to/from OVN
Once the VM/LB IP is exposed in an specific node (either the one hosting the VM/LB or the one with the OVN router gateway port), the OVN BGP Agent is in charge of configuring the linux kernel networking and OVS so that the traffic can be injected into the OVN overlay, and vice versa. To do that, when the agent starts, it ensures that:
- ARP/NDP is enabled at OVS provider bridges by adding an IP to it
- There is a routing table associated to each OVS provider bridge (adds entry at /etc/iproute2/rt_tables)
- If provider network is a VLAN network, a VLAN device connected to the bridge is created, and it has ARP and NDP enabed.
- Cleans up extra OVS flows at the OVS provider bridges
Then, either upon events or due to (re)sync (regularly or during start up), it:
Adds an IP rule to apply specific routing table routes, in this case the one associated to the OVS provider bridge:
$ ip rule 0: from all lookup local 1000: from all lookup [l3mdev-table] *32000: from all to IP lookup br-ex* # br-ex is the OVS provider bridge *32000: from all to CIDR lookup br-ex* # for VMs in tenant networks 32766: from all lookup main 32767: from all lookup default
Adds an IP route at the OVS provider bridge routing table so that the traffic is routed to the OVS provider bridge device:
$ ip route show table br-ex default dev br-ex scope link *CIDR via CR-LRP_IP dev br-ex* # for VMs in tenant networks *CR-LRP_IP dev br-ex scope link* # for the VM in tenant network redirection *IP dev br-ex scope link* # IPs on provider or FIPs
Adds a static ARP entry for the OVN router gateway ports (CR-LRP) so that the traffic is steered to OVN via br-int -- this is because OVN does not reply to ARP requests outside its L2 network:
$ ip nei ... CR-LRP_IP dev br-ex lladdr CR-LRP_MAC PERMANENT ...
For IPv6, instead of the static ARP entry, and NDP proxy is added, same reasoning:
$ ip -6 nei add proxy CR-LRP_IP dev br-ex
Finally, in order for properly send the traffic out from the OVN overlay to kernel networking to be sent out of the node, the OVN BGP Agent needs to add a new flow at the OVS provider bridges so that the destination MAC address is changed to the MAC address of the OVS provider bridge (
actions=mod_dl_dst:OVN_PROVIDER_BRIDGE_MAC,NORMAL
):$ sudo ovs-ofctl dump-flows br-ex cookie=0x3e7, duration=77.949s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, priority=900,ip,in_port="patch-provnet-1" actions=mod_dl_dst:3a:f7:e9:54:e8:4d,NORMAL cookie=0x3e7, duration=77.937s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, priority=900,ipv6,in_port="patch-provnet-1" actions=mod_dl_dst:3a:f7:e9:54:e8:4d,NORMAL
Driver API
The BGP driver needs to implement the driver_api.py
interface with the following functions:
expose_ip
: creates all the ip rules and routes, and ovs flows needed to redirect the traffic to OVN overlay. It also ensure FRR exposes through BGP the required IP.withdraw_ip
: removes the above configuration to withdraw the exposed IP.expose_subnet
: add kernel networking configuration (ip rules and route) to ensure traffic can go from the node to the OVN overlay, and viceversa, for IPs within the tenant subnet CIDR.withdraw_subnet
: removes the above kernel networking configuration.expose_remote_ip
: BGP expose VM tenant network IPs through the chassis hosting the OVN gateway port for the router where the VM is connected. It ensures traffic destinated to the VM IP arrives to this node by exposing the IP through BGP locally. The previous steps inexpose_subnet
ensure the traffic is redirected to the OVN overlay once on the node.withdraw_remote_ip
: removes the above steps to stop advertizing the IP through BGP from the node.
And in addition, it also implements these 2 extra ones for the OVN load balancers on the provider networks
expose_ovn_lb_on_provider
: adds kernel networking configuration to ensure traffic is forwarded from the node to the OVN overlay as well as to expose the VIP through BGP.withdraw_ovn_lb_on_provider
: removes the above steps to stop advertising the load balancer VIP.
Agent deployment
The BGP mode exposes the VMs and LBs in provider networks or with
FIPs, as well as VMs on tenant networks if
expose_tenant_networks
or
expose_ipv6_gua_tenant_networks
configuration options are
enabled.
There is a need to deploy the agent in all the nodes where VMs can be created as well as in the networker nodes (i.e., where OVN router gateway ports can be allocated):
- For VMs and Amphora load balancers on provider networks or with FIPs, the IP is exposed on the node where the VM (or amphora) is deployed. Therefore the agent needs to be running on the compute nodes.
- For VMs on tenant networks (with
expose_tenant_networks
orexpose_ipv6_gua_tenant_networks
configuration options enabled), the agent needs to be running on the networker nodes. In OpenStack, with OVN networking, the N/S traffic to the tenant VMs (without FIPs) needs to go through the networking nodes, more specifically the one hosting the chassisredirect ovn port (cr-lrp), connecting the provider network to the OVN virtual router. Hence, the VM IPs is advertised through BGP in that node, and from there it follows the normal path to the OpenStack compute node where the VM is located — the Geneve tunnel. - Similarly, for OVN load balancer the IPs are exposed on the networker node. In this case the ARP request for the VIP is replied by the OVN router gateway port, therefore the traffic needs to be injected into OVN overlay at that point too. Therefore the agent needs to be running on the networker nodes for OVN load balancers.
As an example of how to start the OVN BGP Agent on the nodes, see the commands below:
$ python setup.py install $ cat bgp-agent.conf # sample configuration that can be adapted based on needs [DEFAULT] debug=True reconcile_interval=120 expose_tenant_networks=True # expose_ipv6_gua_tenant_networks=True driver=osp_bgp_driver address_scopes=2237917c7b12489a84de4ef384a2bcae $ sudo bgp-agent --config-dir bgp-agent.conf Starting BGP Agent... Loaded chassis 51c8480f-c573-4c1c-b96e-582f9ca21e70. BGP Agent Started... Ensuring VRF configuration for advertising routes Configuring br-ex default rule and routing tables for each provider network Found routing table for br-ex with: ['201', 'br-ex'] Sync current routes. Add BGP route for logical port with ip 172.24.4.226 Add BGP route for FIP with ip 172.24.4.199 Add BGP route for CR-LRP Port 172.24.4.221 ....
Note
If you only want to expose the IPv6 GUA tenant IPs, then remove the option
expose_tenant_networks
and addexpose_ipv6_gua_tenant_networks=True
instead.Note
If you what to filter the tenant networks to be exposed by some specific address scopes, add the list of address scopes to
addresss_scope=XXX
section. If no filtering should be applied, just remove the line.
Note that the OVN BGP Agent operates under the next assumptions:
A dynamic routing solution, in this case FRR, is deployed and advertises/withdraws routes added/deleted to/from certain local interface, in this case the ones associated to the VRF created to that end. As only VM and load balancer IPs needs to be advertised, FRR needs to be configure with the proper filtering so that only /32 (or /128 for IPv6) IPs are advertised. A sample config for FRR is:
frr version 7.0 frr defaults traditional hostname cmp-1-0 log file /var/log/frr/frr.log debugging log timestamp precision 3 service integrated-vtysh-config line vty router bgp 64999 bgp router-id 172.30.1.1 bgp log-neighbor-changes bgp graceful-shutdown no bgp default ipv4-unicast no bgp ebgp-requires-policy neighbor uplink peer-group neighbor uplink remote-as internal neighbor uplink password foobar neighbor enp2s0 interface peer-group uplink neighbor enp3s0 interface peer-group uplink address-family ipv4 unicast redistribute connected neighbor uplink activate neighbor uplink allowas-in origin neighbor uplink prefix-list only-host-prefixes out exit-address-family address-family ipv6 unicast redistribute connected neighbor uplink activate neighbor uplink allowas-in origin neighbor uplink prefix-list only-host-prefixes out exit-address-family ip prefix-list only-default permit 0.0.0.0/0 ip prefix-list only-host-prefixes permit 0.0.0.0/0 ge 32 route-map rm-only-default permit 10 match ip address prefix-list only-default set src 172.30.1.1 ip protocol bgp route-map rm-only-default ipv6 prefix-list only-default permit ::/0 ipv6 prefix-list only-host-prefixes permit ::/0 ge 128 route-map rm-only-default permit 11 match ipv6 address prefix-list only-default set src f00d:f00d:f00d:f00d:f00d:f00d:f00d:0004 ipv6 protocol bgp route-map rm-only-default ip nht resolve-via-default
The relevant provider OVS bridges are created and configured with a loopback IP address (eg. 1.1.1.1/32 for IPv4), and proxy ARP/NDP is enabled on their kernel interface. In the case of OpenStack this is done by TripleO directly.
Limitations
The following limitations apply:
- There is no API to decide what to expose, all VMs/LBs on providers
or with Floating IPs associated to them will get exposed. For the VMs in
the tenant networks, the flag
address_scopes
should be used for filtering what subnets to expose -- which should be also used to ensure no overlapping IPs. - There is no support for overlapping CIDRs, so this must be avoided, e.g., by using address scopes and subnet pools.
- Network traffic is steered by kernel routing (ip routes and rules), therefore OVS-DPDK, where the kernel space is skipped, is not supported.
- Network traffic is steered by kernel routing (ip routes and rules), therefore SRIOV, where the hypervisor is skipped, is not supported.
- In OpenStack with OVN networking the N/S traffic to the ovn-octavia VIPs on the provider or the FIPs associated to the VIPs on tenant networks needs to go through the networking nodes (the ones hosting the Neutron Router Gateway Ports, i.e., the chassisredirect cr-lrp ports, for the router connecting the load balancer members to the provider network). Therefore, the entry point into the OVN overlay needs to be one of those networking nodes, and consequently the VIPs (or FIPs to VIPs) are exposed through them. From those nodes the traffic will follow the normal tunneled path (Geneve tunnel) to the OpenStack compute node where the selected member is located.