Neutron

What is Quantum?

Quantum is a project to provide "network connectivity as a service" between devices (e.g., vNICs) managed by other Openstack services (e.g., nova).

Quantum is a result of discussions at the Diablo design summit around improving OpenStack networking.

Quantum now an officially incubated Openstack project. If you're a networking geek and like to hack on OpenStack, please join!

More Info:

• Slides describing Quantum from the Diablo Summit (4/28/11)
• Quantum Design Principles

Why Quantum?

• Support advanced network topologies.
  • Example: create multiple networks per tenant, multi-tier applications, etc. that go beyond what is possible with nova's FlatManager or VlanManager
• Let anyone build services (open and closed source) that plug into Openstack networks.
  • Examples: VPN-aaS, firewall-aaS, IDS-aaS.
• Enable innovation plugins (open and closed source) that overcomes common cloud networking problems and introduce advanced network capabilities
  • Example: avoid VLAN limits, provide strong end-to-end QoS guarantees.

Current Status

Quantum was proposed at the Diablo summit (end of April 2011) and in just a few months we've made a ton of progress.

We have the basic web services API, CLI tools, and a plugin that works on Linux (KVM + XenServer) when used in conjunction with changes that will be landing in nova with the Diablo-3 release (end-of-July). We will be publishing tutorials once the Diable-3 release it available. Additional plugins are also in the works, as is a framework to allow plugins to provide extensions that expose advanced functionality.

Participate

To get code, ask questions, view blueprints, etc, see: Quantum Launchpad Page

Email list: https://launchpad.net/~netstack

If you would like to participate, please send mail to the netstack list.

You can also attend our regular IRC meetings, which start one hour after the main openstack meeting, on the same #openstack-meeting channel: http://wiki.openstack.org/Network/Meetings

Blueprints for Major Areas of Dev Activity

The next major set of tasks will be decided on at the Essex summit. You're welcome to participate in discussions, look for the NetStack track.