Melange

• Launchpad Entry: NovaSpec:Melange
• Created: 2 May 2011
• Drafter: Troy Toman
• Contributors:

Summary

Melange is intended to provide network information services for use across OpenStack services. The initial focus will be on IP address management (IPAM) and DHCP functionality. Melange is intended to be a standalone service with it's own API. However, the initial use case will be to decouple existing IP management and dns_masq functionality from Nova and support the existing Nova networking functionality.

Longer term, Melange will evolve to integrate with other OpenStack services, particularly the Quantum service (virtual network segments) and Load Balancer as a Service (LBaaS).

Release Note

This section should include a paragraph describing the end-user impact of this change. It is meant to be included in the release notes of the first release in which it is implemented. (Not all of these will actually be included in the release notes, at the release manager's discretion; but writing them is a useful exercise.)

It is mandatory.

Rationale

IP addresses are an important resource for a cloud provider to manage, and providers will need flexibility in how addresses are assigned to VMs and other networking-related services (e.g., load balancing devices). The existing IP association mechanism is tightly coupled to Nova's network provisioning mechanism, including a networking host that provides NAT and may not work well with a providers network design. Additionally, customers may want to assigned their own addresses, for example, isolated tenant networks that use RFC 1918 space or have a VPN to a network at a remote site).

Design

You can have subsections that better describe specific parts of the issue.

Implementation

This section should describe a plan of action (the "how") to implement the changes discussed. Could include subsections like:

UI Changes

Should cover changes required to the UI, or specific UI that is required to implement this

Code Changes

Code changes should include an overview of what needs to change, and in some cases even the specific details.

Migration

Include:

• data migration, if any
• redirects from old URLs to new ones, if any
• how users will be pointed to the new way of doing things, if necessary.

Test/Demo Plan

This need not be added or completed until the specification is nearing beta.

Unresolved issues

This should highlight any issues that should be addressed in further specifications, and not problems with the specification itself; since any specification with problems cannot be approved.

BoF agenda and discussion

Use this section to take notes during the BoF; if you keep it in the approved spec, use it for summarising what was discussed and note any options that were rejected.

---