Steth

A network inspection tool for OpenStack.

Steth is an inspection tool that can aid in pinpointing issues before deployment and during operation of an OpenStack environment.

It is modelled as agent(s)/client in which a controller interacts with agents deployed in your environment.

Background

OpenStack networking can be deloyed as different architectures, such as ML2 with OVS(legacy and DVR), Linux bridge, OVN, Dragonflow and so forth. However, they all need enviromental prerequisites. For instance, VLAN needs to be configured as we expect; bandwidth should meet our requirements; connection between nodes should be active, etc.

Besides, with some well-deployed architectures, troubleshooting for VM networking is difficult. For instance, why VM cannot get an IP address; or why it cannot connect to Internet, etc. Steth integrates useful scripts and third party tools(like iperf, tcpdump, etc.) to help operators keep tracking on VM networking.

Mission

Steth is an introspection tool for OpenStack networking. Only proved to be working in ML2 with OVS for now.

Multiple Node Architecture

                                                                   note that steth does not save
                                                                   any state, it acts as a rpc
                                                                   client which makes requests to steth
                                    +--------------------------+   agent(s) and analyses the result.
                                    |                          |
                                    |   +------CLI---------+   |
                                    |   |                  |   |
             +--------------------------+     steth        +--------------------------+
             |                      |   |                  |   |                      |
             |                      |   +--------+---------+   |                      |
             |                      |            |             |                      |
             |                      +--------------------------+                      |
             |                                   |                                    |
             v                                   v                                    v
+-------+port:9698---------+        +-------+port:9698---------+         +-------+port:9698---------+
|            ^             |        |            ^             |         |            ^             |
|            |             |        |            |             |         |            |             |
| +----------+-------+     |        | +----------+-------+     |         | +----------+-------+     |
| |                  |     |        | |                  |     |         | |                  |     |
| |   steth-agent    |     |        | |   steth-agent    |     |         | |   steth-agent    |     |
| |                  |     |        | |                  |     |         | |                  |     |
| +-----------+------+     |        | +-----------+------+     |         | +-----------+------+     |
|             |            |        |             |            |         |             |            |
|             |            |        |             |            |         |             |            |
|  +----------v----------+ |        |  +----------v----------+ |         |  +----------v----------+ |
|  | run command like:   | |        |  | run command like:   | |         |  | run command like:   | |
|  | ping, iperf, tcpdump| |        |  | ping, iperf, tcpdump| |         |  | ping, iperf, tcpdump| |
|  | or use scapy to send| |        |  | or use scapy to send| |         |  | or use scapy to send| |
|  | packet              | |        |  | packet              | |         |  | packet              | |
|  +---------------------+ |        |  +---------------------+ |         |  +---------------------+ |
|                          |        |                          |         |                          |
|                          |        |                          |         |                          |
+--------------------------+        +--------------------------+         +--------------------------+

In multiple nodes scenario, Steth is a steteless CLI and controller. It knows each steth agent and will read config files, interact with OpenStack, and following by sending signals to agents if it is needed.

Steth Agent is introduced to manage processes or run commands. It should be installed in each compute and network node, and their IPs should be defined at config file of steth controller.

Steth Agent

Linstening in 0.0.0.0:9698 and waiting for the rpc request.

Note: for get_interface() agent API, we use ifconfig to get full information. However, the output of ifconfig varies from a Linux distribution to another. The API has only been tested on CentOS 6.5 and 7.0, not any other distributions else.