Horizon-NFV-configuration

Network Function Virtualization -- Horizon Dashboard Support

OpenStack Neutron is being extended to support Network Function Virtualization, the ability to request and deploy virtual machines (VMs) that provide common network services. These include Fire Wall as a Service (FWaaS), Load Balancer as a Service (LBaaS), Virtual Private network as a Service (VPNaaS), Intrusion Detection (IDaaS) and more. We shall refer to this category of VMs as service VMs. Further, OpenStack seeks to support plugin implementations of the service VMs, and allow cloud users a choice of implementations and pricing models.

The Horizon dashboard allows cloud users to request a VM and configure various aspects, such as flavor (hard ware and other characteristics desired), the VM image to be used (from a list of options in Glance the image repository). This is in addition to the ability to monitor all their VMs.

To ease the use of service VMs, we seek to provide in Horizon:

1. Ability to request a Service VM type
2. Provide a list of service VM options given a type (that auto fills the glance image behind the scenes)
3. Configure standard options for the service VM