Monthly Archives: December 2012

Lab Stough, OpenStack

Open vSwitch 1.4 installation from package on Ubuntu 12.04

3 Comments

In trying to get a more grounded feeling for OpenStack I’ve decided to build a home lab. One step involves configuring Open vSwitch to bridge with VMs. In this post I shall cover the Open vSwitch (OVS) build process along with KVM installation. Future posts shall cover more detailed configurations and scenarios along with videos.

While I am more familiar with the CentOS/RHE flavors of Linux, there seems to be more support for OVS on the Debian/Ubuntu platform. So in this post I am covering Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. There are two ways to install OVS:

  • Use Ubuntu’s apt-get installer to install packages – easier
  • Build from source code – more difficult

This post is aiming at the low-hanging fruit of building from the package. The drawback is that newer features are unavailable in the package. The package version of OVS is 1.4.0. The most stable Long Term release, as of writing, is 1.4.3, while the latest release, 1.7.1, includes support for VXLAN and Open Flow. I plan to document my findings with various builds and Linux flavors in future posts.

As I mentioned, I built OVS 1.4.0 off of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Long Term Support), which runs kernel version 3.2. The following steps are taken from various documents on the OVS site, while the outputs are excerpts from my lab.

root@pakdude-02:~# uname -a
Linux pakdude-02 3.2.0-34-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Thu Nov 15 10:48:16 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
root@pakdude-02:~# apt-get install build-essential fakeroot openvswitch-switch openvswitch-common openvswitch-datapath-source

Keep in mind that additional packages, such as dkms (Dynamic Kernel Module Support), were installed as a result because they were pre-requisites.
The following output is good:

DKMS: build completed.

openvswitch_mod:
Running module version sanity check.
 - Original module
   - No original module exists within this kernel
 - Installation
   - Installing to /lib/modules/3.2.0-34-generic/updates/dkms/

brcompat_mod.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
 - Original module
   - No original module exists within this kernel
 - Installation
   - Installing to /lib/modules/3.2.0-34-generic/updates/dkms/

depmod....

DKMS: install completed.
Setting up openvswitch-switch (1.4.0-1ubuntu1.3) ...
 * Inserting openvswitch module
 * /etc/openvswitch/conf.db does not exist
 * Creating empty database /etc/openvswitch/conf.db
 * Starting ovsdb-server
 * Configuring Open vSwitch system IDs
 * Starting ovs-vswitchd
 * Enabling gre with iptables

OVS has now been built. We will verify shortly. But first, we need to install KVM, a full-blown virtualization solution for Linux, and libvirt-bin, a daemon that loads the KVM modules. KVM also inclue virsh, which is a tool to manage (create, start, stop, etc) virtual domains or networks. Remember, KVM requires libvirt-bin.

root@pakdude-02:~# apt-get install libvirt-bin

Note that this will install bridge-utils and ebtables as well. We will get to that shortly. First, we want to destroy the default network created by libvirt-bin, which is virbr0. OVS will supply the network instead.

root@pakdude-02:~# ifconfig virbr0
virbr0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 4e:c0:0d:41:e3:0c  
          inet addr:192.168.122.1  Bcast:192.168.122.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

root@pakdude-02:~# virsh net-destroy default
Network default destroyed

root@pakdude-02:~# virsh net-autostart --disable default
Network default unmarked as autostarted

root@pakdude-02:~# ifconfig virbr0
virbr0: error fetching interface information: Device not found

Now we have to actually install KVM.

root@pakdude-02:~# apt-get install kvm

Some additional packages are installed in the process.
Keep in mind that ebtables is not needed, so remove it. OVS will play the role of the bridge.

root@pakdude-02:~# apt-get purge ebtables

bridge still showed up in lsmod | grep bridge, but there was no need to rmmod it (as shown in many other guides on the web) as it was gone upon the next reboot. Remember, OVS will assume the bridging functionality. Some guides mention Bridge Compatibility installation. However, I do not see the need. Bridge Compatibility provides a way for applications that use the Linux bridge to gradually migrate to OVS. Programs that ordinarily control the Linux bridge module, such as brctl, instead control the OVS kernel-based switch. If you do not already depend on these programs, then you do not need bridge compatibility.

root@pakdude-02:~# service openvswitch-switch status
ovsdb-server is running with pid 1104
ovs-vswitchd is running with pid 1125
root@pakdude-02:~# ovs-vsctl show
ab15a0d5-7c66-4388-b921-5d4397a7608b
    ovs_version: "1.4.0+build0"

We’re good to go. Additionally, these are the relevent processes that are now running:

root@pakdude-02:~# ps -face | grep ovs
root      1103     1 TS   29 23:45 ?        00:00:00 ovsdb-server: monitoring pid 1104 (healthy)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
root      1104  1103 TS   29 23:45 ?        00:00:00 ovsdb-server /etc/openvswitch/conf.db -vANY:CONSOLE:EMER -vANY:SYSLOG:ERR -vANY:FILE:INFO --remote=punix:/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock --remote=db:Open_vSwitch,manager_options --private-key=db:SSL,private_key --certificate=db:SSL,certificate --bootstrap-ca-cert=db:SSL,ca_cert --no-chdir --log-file=/var/log/openvswitch/ovsdb-server.log --pidfile=/var/run/openvswitch/ovsdb-server.pid --detach --monitor
root      1124     1 TS   29 23:45 ?        00:00:00 ovs-vswitchd: monitoring pid 1125 (healthy)                                                                                                                                                                                                 
root      1125  1124 TS   29 23:45 ?        00:00:00 ovs-vswitchd unix:/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock -vANY:CONSOLE:EMER -vANY:SYSLOG:ERR -vANY:FILE:INFO --mlockall --no-chdir --log-file=/var/log/openvswitch/ovs-vswitchd.log --pidfile=/var/run/openvswitch/ovs-vswitchd.pid --detach --monitor
root      2346  2183 TS   19 23:57 pts/1    00:00:00 grep --color=auto ovs
root@pakdude-02:~#

And that’s about it. Hopefully I’ll get some functionality and configurations up here soon.

Advertisement
SDN, Startups

Challenges that Plexxi Faces

4 Comments

This week, the Lean Startup conference was held in San Francisco. The Lean Startup philosophy borrows its roots from the lean management method of manufacturing, with Kanban or Just-in-time processing at the center of the design principle. It basically advocates startups to minimize outside funding, not strive for the perfect product (think Minimal Viable Product), be flexible (think Pivot), and cater the product completely to the customer’s needs, all with the goal of being a highly efficient company.

However, as noted investor Marc Andreessen, who spoke at the conference, warns,

Not all startups can be Lean Startups

Indeed, some startups cannot afford to employ a Pivot. Infrastructure or hardware companies come to mind, especially when they’ve already taken $50 million of investment. This is what Plexxi has done without a complete solution to show for yet.

I was listening to the recent Packet Pushers show #126 sponsored by Plexxi. While their approach is a creative one, I’m not sure whether it is viable. In a nutshell, Plexxi brings optical technology, in the form of WDM, to the Data Center and flattens traditional hierarchical network designs. When I first started learning about network designs, the classical approach was the 3-tier Core-Distribution-Access model. In the mid-2000s this got reduced to a Collapsed Core. What Plexxi proposes is a flat topology, eliminating the need for Core switches in the Data Center.

Plexxi adopted the SDN approach of a programmable controller (a virtual appliance) that pushes policies to its switches. The policies are intended to optimize data path flow for affinitized traffic. Applications that are more sensitive of certain resources are classified in Affinity Networks. Some example of the constraints or sensitivities that Plexxi’s Director of Product Management, Marten Terpstra, described include:

  • Hop-count
  • Bandwidth

Plexxi switches use merchant silicon (Broadcom ASICs) to form an Ethernet ring on top of a WDM lightwave. By changing lambdas, Layer-1 connections between switches can be changed according to the application requirements.

Plexxi uses their own closed APIs for communication between their switch interfaces and their controller, in order to convey their message of affinities. However, they open up their proprietary northbound API for user-to-controller communication so users can write scripts, for example, by using REST APIs. Interestingly, they are a member of Open Network Foundation. The Controller places TCAM entries in switches based on application requirements for affinitized traffic.

Terpstra discussed two use cases:

  1. Affinitized iSCSI traffic for most bandwidth with least number of hops
  2. Cloud provider – Use a Plexxi ring as a premium service to affinitize traffic.

In neither case are the results mentioned.

Okay, so so far Plexxi’s solution is a 1 RU box that can prioritize traffic based on hop-count and bandwidth. I fail to see much of a business case there. Any network engineer worth his or her salt will tell you that there is more to traffic classification and prioritization than just hop-count and bandwidth. Financial trading institutions would be more concerned about latency guarantees. Hop Count alone is a flimsy criterion to classify important traffic, regardless of whether a cute term like Affinity Network is given to that classification. High Availability is a critical issue that a ring topology exacerbates. As Doug Gourlay of Arista mentions, unnecessary downtime is introduced any time you add new nodes because the ring is broken. Moreover, the network is reduced to a split brain model in the even of just two nodes going down. Depending on the Controller placement, this could have adverse outcomes. The thing about outages is that we can never control where they occur. Gourlay rightly puts it:

I thought Token Ring died for good reasons… why is someone trying to bring it back?

Getting back to the Lean Startup idea, Terpstra said “Our Layer-3 affinities are coming”. Plexxi is targeting Christmas 2012 for 1.0 version of Layer-3 capabilities. Until then Plexxi only has a Layer-2 switch with no quotable value to show for $50 million in investment. Not a good time to Pivot.

Reports of the death of the Core switch in the Data Center have been greatly exaggerated.