Difference between revisions of "Neutron/LBaaS/NetScaler"

Revision as of 23:41, 11 June 2014

NetScaler LBaaS integration in Neutron LBaaS

The NetScaler loadbalancer integration in Neutron LBaaS implements all the LBaaS driver CRUD APIs defined in the Havana release: It implements all the defined operations on VIPs, Pools, Pool Members and Health Monitors. The integration consists of a driver class configured in the Neutron config file (neutron.conf), and the accompanying unit tests.

The integration support is available in OpenStack IceHouse release.

Integration Design

The NetScaler LBaaS integration consists of a driver class that implements the Neutron LBaaS driver which calls the NetScaler Control Center (NCC) service using NCC REST APIs. NCC is a separate service that runs outside of OpenStack infrastructure, and is deployed as a "virtual appliance" on supported hypervisor platforms (KVM/ESX/XenServer) for ease of setup. The NCC service is charged with NetScaler resource management, and NetScaler device configuration.

The figure below outlines the NetScaler integration components in the Neutron framework:

As shown in the figure above, the NetScaler LBaaS driver forwards the driver calls to the NetScaler Control Center Service which implements the operations on vips/pools/members/monitors. The driver also periodically calls NCC on background task to update status of the different LB resources and collect statistics.

Products Supported

The NetScaler LBaaS driver for Neutron targets the following Citrix products:

NetScaler hardware appliances (MPX series)
NetScaler Virtual appliances (VPX series) – Supported on KVM, Xen, VMware ESX and Microsoft HyperV
NetScaler multi-tenant hardware appliances (SDX series)
NetScaler Control Center

Please contact Citrix for availability information of NetScaler Control Center.

Product Versions supported

The following versions are supported by this integration:

NetScaler MPX 10.1
NetScaler VPX 10.1
NetScaler SDX 10.1
NetScaler Control Center 1.0 (to be release in Q4 2013)

Virtual Networking support

For the MPX and SDX hardware appliances, we intend to support all the Neutron L2/L3 plugins that support VLAN-backed virtual networks in Neutron. The LBaaS driver and agent will configure the hardware appliances with the vlans corresponding to vip and pool networks.

For the VPX virtual appliances, we are agnostic to the type of virtual networking used: The NetScaler VPX is running as a normal VM in Nova and can be launched and networked into the pool and vip networks like any VM in Nova, by leveraging the L2/L3 plugin/agent configured in Neutron and Nova setup.

Further information on the code contribution

All code contributed is in the form of python code, and was developed to adhere to the Neutron coding conventions.

There are no changes made to Neutron LBaaS plugin. All the code contribution is in the driver class.

There are no changes to the Neutron LBaaS DB schema. The contributed driver does not write to the DB and does not need to extend the DB schema, and therefore they does not hold any extra state, besides what the LBaaS plugin already holds.

For configuring the NetScaler LBaaS driver, the NetScaler driver class needs to be included in the neutron.conf file, so it can be loaded by the LBaaS plugin. When the user creates an LB pool, they will need to include a "provider" attribute that maps to the NetScaler driver class in the config file.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 == NetScaler LBaaS integration in Neutron LBaaS ==
-The NetScaler loadbalancer integration in Neutron LBaaS implements all the LBaaS driver CRUD APIs defined in the Havana release: It implements all the defined operations on VIPs, Pools, Pool Members and Health Monitors.  The integration consists of two pieces:
+The NetScaler loadbalancer integration in Neutron LBaaS implements all the LBaaS driver CRUD APIs defined in the Havana release: It implements all the defined operations on VIPs, Pools, Pool Members and Health Monitors.  The integration consists of a driver class configured in the Neutron config file (neutron.conf), and the accompanying unit tests.
-*	A driver class configured in the Neutron config file (neutron.conf)
-*	An LBaaS agent that runs on the network node
+The integration support  is  available in OpenStack IceHouse release.
-The integration support  is  targeted for the OpenStack IceHouse release.
 == Integration Design ==
-The NetScaler LBaaS integration follows the same model as the HAProxy integration in Neutron LBaaS: It consists of a driver class that implements the Neutron LBaaS driver calls and a NetScaler LBaaS agent (similar to the HAProxy agent) which runs on the Network node. This agent receives RPC messages from the NetScaler LBaaS driver and is charged with realizing those LBaaS operations on the NetScaler devices, using NetScaler Control Center service REST APIs.
+The NetScaler LBaaS integration consists of a driver class that implements the Neutron LBaaS driver which calls the NetScaler Control Center (NCC) service using NCC REST APIs.  NCC is a separate service that runs outside of OpenStack infrastructure, and is deployed as a "virtual appliance" on supported hypervisor platforms (KVM/ESX/XenServer) for ease of setup.  The NCC service is charged with NetScaler resource management, and NetScaler device configuration.
 The figure below outlines the NetScaler integration components in the Neutron framework:
@@ Line 17: / Line 14: @@
-As shown in the figure above, the NetScaler LBaaS driver forwards the driver calls to the NetScaler agent using OpenStack RPC cast calls. The agent will then invoke the REST APIs of the NetScaler Control Center Service to implement the operations on vips/pools/members/monitors. The Agent can call back the NetScaler LBaaS driver to update the status of the entities using direct rpc synchronous calls.
+As shown in the figure above, the NetScaler LBaaS driver forwards the driver calls to the NetScaler Control Center Service which implements the operations on vips/pools/members/monitors. The driver also periodically calls NCC on background task to update status of the different LB resources and collect statistics.
 == Products Supported ==
@@ Line 26: / Line 23: @@
 *	NetScaler multi-tenant hardware appliances (SDX series)
 *	NetScaler Control Center
+Please contact Citrix for availability information of NetScaler Control Center.
 == Product Versions supported ==
@@ Line 46: / Line 45: @@
 All code contributed is in the form of python code, and was developed to adhere to the Neutron coding conventions.
-There are no changes made to Neutron LBaaS plugin. All the code contribution is in the driver class and the agent.
+There are no changes made to Neutron LBaaS plugin. All the code contribution is in the driver class.
-There are no changes to the Neutron LBaaS DB schema. The contributed driver and agent do not write to the DB and do not need to extend the DB schema, and therefore they do not hold any extra state, besides what the LBaaS plugin already holds.
+There are no changes to the Neutron LBaaS DB schema. The contributed driver does not write to the DB and does not need to extend the DB schema, and therefore they does not hold any extra state, besides what the LBaaS plugin already holds.
 For configuring the NetScaler LBaaS driver, the NetScaler driver class needs to be included in the neutron.conf file, so it can be loaded by the LBaaS plugin. When the user creates an LB pool, they will need to include a "provider" attribute that maps to the NetScaler driver class in the config file.
-The NetScaler LBaaS agent (like the HAProxy agent) has a separate "lbaas-agent.ini" config file in /etc/neutron/services/loadbalancer/netscaler. This config file is specified in the launch command of the agent.