Neutron

What is Quantum?

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

Starting in the Folsom development cycle, Quantum will be a core and supported part of the OpenStack platform (for Essex, we are an "incubated" project, which means use is suggested only for those who really know what they're doing with Quantum).

If you're a networking geek and like to hack on OpenStack, please join!

More Info:

• Overview of Quantum (3/26/12)
• Video Quantum Overview (3/7/12)
• Somewhat outdated slides describing Quantum from the Diablo Summit (4/28/11)
• Quantum Design Principles

Why Quantum?

• Give cloud tenants an API to build rich networking topologies, and configure advanced network policies in the cloud.
  • Example: create multi-tier web application topology
• Enable innovation plugins (open and closed source) that introduce advanced network capabilities
  • Example: use L2-in-L3 tunneling to avoid VLAN limits, provide end-to-end QoS guarantees, used monitoring protocols like NetFlow.
• Let anyone build advanced network services (open and closed source) that plug into Openstack tenant networks.
  • Examples: VPN-aaS, firewall-aaS, IDS-aaS, data-center-interconnect-aaS.

Using Quantum

Following the instructions in the Quantum Administrator Guide to use Quantum with OpenStack Nova.

Forget documentation, I just want to get the code!: Quantum Downloads

Detailed information for programming against v1.0 of the Quantum web services API is available in the Quantum API Guide

If you are looking for Quantum packaged for your Linux distribution, please see: QuantumPackages .

If you are looking for information on using Quantum with devstack, please see: QuantumDevstack .

If you are looking for information on using Quantum using the v2 API with devstack, please see: Quantumv2ApiDevstack .

Current Project Status

Quantum was proposed at the Diablo summit (end of April 2011) and since then we've made a ton of progress.

The 2012.1 "Essex" release includes:

• v1.0 and v1.1 of the Quantum API
• API Extensibility Framework
• API Client Library and CLI
• Integration with OpenStack Nova via the QuantumManager
• Several publicly available plugins:
  • Open vSwitch Plugin
  • Cisco UCS/Nexus Plugin
  • Linux Bridge Plugin
  • Nicira Network Virtualization Platform (NVP) Plugin
  • Ryu OpenFlow Controller Plugin
• Integration with Devstack (see: http://wiki.openstack.org/QuantumDevstack)
• Packaging for Ubuntu 12.04, Fedora 17 and Debian wheezy/unstable.

Participate

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

See QuantumDevelopment for some (rough) guides on how to contribute code to Quantum, including how to add your own plugin.

If you would like to participate, please send mail to the netstack list: https://launchpad.net/~netstack

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

Check out QuantumStarterBugs for ideas on easy bugs or starter projects you might tackle. Or just start playing with QuantumDevstack and come up with your own ideas!