Understanding Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director

This chapter explains how to integrate a Contrail 5.1.x installation (or higher) with Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director 13.

Red Hat OpenStack Platform provides an installer called the Red Hat OpenStack Platform director (RHOSPd or OSPd), which is a toolset based on the OpenStack project TripleO (OOO, OpenStack on OpenStack). TripleO is an open source project that uses features of OpenStack to deploy a fully functional, tenant-facing OpenStack environment.

TripleO can be used to deploy an RDO-based OpenStack environment integrated with Tungsten Fabric. Red Hat OpenStack Platform director can be used to deploy an RHOSP-based OpenStack environment integrated with Contrail.

OSPd uses the concepts of undercloud and overcloud. OSPd sets up an undercloud, a single server running an operator-facing deployment that contains the OpenStack components needed to deploy and manage an overcloud, a tenant-facing deployment that hosts user workloads.

The overcloud is the deployed solution that can represent a cloud for any purpose, such as production, staging, test, and so on. The operator can select to deploy to their environment any of the available overcloud roles, such as controller, compute, and the like.

OSPd leverages existing core components of OpenStack including Nova, Ironic, Neutron, Heat, Glance, and Ceilometer to deploy OpenStack on bare metal hardware.

• Nova and Ironic are used in the undercloud to manage the bare metal instances that comprise the infrastructure for the overcloud.

• Neutron is used to provide a networking environment in which to deploy the overcloud.

• Glance stores machine images.

• Ceilometer collects metrics about the overcloud.

For more information about OSPd architecture, see OSPd documentation.

OSPd supports composable roles, which are groups of services that you define through Heat templates. Composable roles allow you to integrate Contrail into the overcloud environment.

The following are the Contrail roles used for integrating into the overcloud:

• Contrail Controller

• Contrail Analytics

• Contrail Analytics Database

• Contrail-TSN

• Contrail-DPDK

Figure 1 shows the relationship and components of an undercloud and overcloud architecture for Contrail.

Figure 1: Undercloud and Overcloud with Roles

The undercloud is a single server or VM that hosts the OpenStack Platform director, which is an OpenStack installation used to provision OpenStack on the overcloud.

See Undercloud Requirements for the compute requirements of the undercloud.

The overcloud roles can be deployed to bare metal servers or to virtual machines (VMs), but the compute nodes must be deployed to bare metal systems. Every overcloud node must support IPMI for booting up from the undercloud using PXE.

Ensure the following requirements are met for the Contrail nodes per role.

• Non-high availability: A minimum of 4 overcloud nodes are needed for control plane roles for a non-high availability deployment:

  • 1x contrail-config (includes Contrail control)

  • 1x contrail-analytics

  • 1x contrail-analytics-database

  • 1x OpenStack controller

• High availability: A minimum of 12 overcloud nodes are needed for control plane roles for a high availability deployment:

  • 3x contrail-config (includes Contrail control)

  • 3x contrail-analytics

  • 3x contrail-analytics-database

  • 3x OpenStack controller

  If the control plane roles are deployed to VMs, use 3 separate physical servers and deploy one role of each kind to each physical server.

See Overcloud Requirements for the compute requirements of the overcloud.

As a minimum, the installation requires two networks:

• provisioning network - This is the private network that the undercloud uses to provision the overcloud.

• external network - This is the externally-routable network you use to access the undercloud and overcloud nodes.

Ensure the following requirements are met for the provisioning network:

• One NIC from every machine must be in the same broadcast domain of the provisioning network, and it should be the same NIC on each of the overcloud machines. For example, if you use the second NIC on the first overcloud machine, you should use the second NIC on each additional overcloud machine.

  During installation, these NICs will be referenced by a single name across all overcloud machines.

• The provisioning network NIC should not be the same NIC that you are using for remote connectivity to the undercloud machine. During the undercloud installation, an Open vSwitch bridge will be created for Neutron, and the provisioning NIC will be bridged to the Open vSwitch bridge. Consequently, connectivity would be lost if the provisioning NIC was also used for remote connectivity to the undercloud machine.

• The provisioning NIC on the overcloud nodes must be untagged.

• You must have the MAC address of the NIC that will PXE boot the IPMI information for the machine on the provisioning network. The IPMI information will include such things as the IP address of the IPMI NIC and the IPMI username and password.

• All of the networks must be available to all of the Contrail roles and computes.

While the provisioning and external networks are sufficient for basic applications, you should create additional networks in most overcloud environments to provide isolation for the different traffic types by assigning network traffic to specific network interfaces or bonds.

When isolated networks are configured, the OpenStack services are configured to use the isolated networks. If no isolated networks are configured, all services run on the provisioning network. If only some isolated networks are configured, traffic belonging to a network not configured runs on the provisioning network.

The following networks are typically deployed when using network isolation topology:

• Provisioning - used by the undercloud to provision the overcloud

• Internal API - used by OpenStack services to communicate with each other

• Tenant - used for tenant overlay data plane traffic (one network per tenant)

• Storage - used for storage data traffic

• Storage Management - used for storage control and management traffic

• External - provides external access to the undercloud and overcloud, including external access to the web UIs and public APIs

• Floating IP - provides floating IP access to the tenant network (can either be merged with external or can be a separate network)

• Management - provides access for system administration

For more information on the different network types, see Planning Networks.

For more information on networking requirements, see Networking Requirements.

The following combinations of Operating System/OpenStack/Deployer/Contrail are supported:

The general installation procedure is as follows:

• Set up the infrastructure, which is the set of servers or VMs that host the undercloud and overcloud, including the provisioning network that connects them together.

• Set up the undercloud, which is the OSPd application.

• Set up the overcloud, which is the set of services in the tenant-facing network. Contrail is part of the overcloud.

For more information on installing and using the RHOSPd, see Red Hat documentation.