Comment 2 for bug 782364

I think I might be missing some context, because I'm not seeing a compelling reason why this should be apart of nova-network, rather than managed entirely by external software such as heartbeat.

In the case of an active/passive nova cluster, in the event of the active host failing the passive host will need to do the following:

  - Bring up a network interface for the IP address that the active host used to respond on
    - It is possible that this interface is already active and configured to not ARP
  - Send a gratuitous ARP on the new interface so the new mac address/switch port gets registered across the network
  - Start up nova-network on the passive host, ready to continue work of active via some shared resource or synchronization

Currently, Nova cannot do any of these things, so even if gratuitous ARP support is added, Nova is still dependent upon third party HA software to manage bringing up the interface and turning on nova-network, so why not let the third-party manage the nics and ARPs?

The only way adding this makes sense to me is if there is a long term goal to add full HA services to nova such that no third-party HA software is necessary. I didn't see any blueprint that talks about full HA services in launchpad.