Add an IVS os-vif plugin

[Stephen Finucane]

os-vif has been integrated into nova since the newton cycle. With the integration of os-vif, the expectation is that all the old, non-os-vif plugging/unplugging code found in [1] will be replaced by code that harnesses os-vif plugins [2]. This has yet to happen for IVS VIFs, and it's about time we started moving this forward.

IVS VIFs need their own os-vif plugins. The os-vif package itself only provides two reference plugins, one for linux bridge and another for OVS, meaning any other plugins must be kept elsewhere. The plugin could be either include this in the networking-bigswitch project or, better, as a separate project (so it can be versioned and released separately). For example, see contrail's implementation [3].

The os-vif developers, including myself, are prepared to help author this plugin. Feel free to ping us on IRC (stephenfin) or reach out on openstack-dev if you have questions. However, the legacy code will eventually be going away so this is needed sooner rather than later.

[1] https://github.com/openstack/nova/blob/6205a3f8c/nova/virt/libvirt/vif.py#L599-L764
[2] https://github.com/openstack/nova/blob/6205a3f8c/nova/network/os_vif_util.py#L346-L403
[3] https://github.com/Juniper/contrail-nova-vif-driver

[Aditya Vaja (wolverine-av)]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the heads up and creating the bug. I've added this as an action item for the upcoming dev cycle here at Big Switch Networks and ensure IVS VIFs have their own os-vif plugins.

[sean mooney (sean-k-mooney)]

hi are you happy to host this yourself in networking-bigswitch or would you like to use a dedicated repo for the plugin.

[Aditya Vaja (wolverine-av)]

Hey Sean,

I'll be hosting this as part of networking-bigswitch repo.

[Sorry about the delay - missed the email notification while marking the daily influx of openstack mails mark-as-read. Oops!]

[Aditya Vaja (wolverine-av)]

Hey Stephen,

I just realized when doing the integration with triple-o in queens, that having all Big Switch Networks pieces under a single package would be an issue, when installing it in containers.
So when horizon requires the BSN neutronclient or nova-compute needs IVS os-vif plugin, they all need to install networking-bigswitch - which is not ideal when deploying containers (defeats the purpose).

I was wondering if we can still go ahead and create the repo as you had suggested earlier?

[Stephen Finucane (stephenfinucane)]

I don't see why not. If it's a separate package, we can use that if it's installed.

[Aditya Vaja (wolverine-av)]

Alright, I'll go ahead and create a separate repo for it. It doesn't have to be under openstack/<project-name> on github, right?
I see that the sample contrail implementation was hosted under juniper/<plugin>. So I assume it would be fine.

Minor follow-up on the open pull request in nova [2] - it is for the removal of IVS danglings in nova. I guess I'll update the release-note attached there to point to the new repo.

[1] https://github.com/Juniper/contrail-nova-vif-driver
[2] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/534371/