BSN-Dell-Mirantis OpenStack Scale Testing White Paper_v2.0

 ©  Big  Switch  Networks          1  

Dell,  Mirantis  &  Big  Switch  Showcase  Industry’s  First  300-­‐node  OpenStack  Data  Center  Pod  

With  Project  Neutron,  the  OpenStack  community  has  made  significant  progress  in  creating  a  modular,  plugin  architecture  that  relies  on  well-­‐defined  APIs  to  provide  ‘networking  as  a  service’.    Challenges,  however  remain  in  two  key  areas  –  Ease  of  Deployment  &  Scale  of  Neutron  Networking.    To  address  these  challenges,  Big  Switch  Networks  introduced  Big  Cloud  Fabric  (P+V  Edition)—the  industry’s  first  Unified  SDN  fabric  that  delivers  a  highly  resilient  and  automated  networking  solution  for  OpenStack  data  centers.    Big  Cloud  Fabric  (BCF)  is  built  as  a  leaf,  spine  and  virtual  switch  fabric,  with  the  BCF  Controller  acting  as  the  single  pane  for  provisioning,  troubleshooting,  visibility  and  analytics  of  the  entire  physical  and  virtual  network  environment.  

To  validate  the  solution  and  test  OpenStack  Neutron  deployment  at  scale,  Big  Switch  collaborated  with  Dell  and  Mirantis  to  deploy  and  test  a  fully  populated  8-­‐Rack  (300  node)  OpenStack  data  center  setup  in  a  Dell  facility.    The  complete  solution  included:  

• Dell  Networking  Switches  &  Servers  including  a  portfolio  of  10/40GbE  open  networking  switches  (S6000-­‐ON  &  S4048-­‐ON)  and  1RU  rack  servers  (PowerEdge  Series).  

• Mirantis  OpenStack  6.1  with  Mirantis  Fuel  Installer  for  rapid,  flexible  and  stable  deployment  of  OpenStack  components.  • Big  Cloud  Fabric  (P+V  Edition)  with  BCF  OpenStack  Neutron  Plugin  for  L2+L3  networking  using  ML2  driver  and  L3  plugin,  to  

provide  scale  and  resiliency  necessary  for  production-­‐grade  OpenStack  deployments.  • BCF  OpenStack  Installer  (BOSI)—a  plugin  for  OpenStack  installation  that  seamlessly  interoperates  with  installers  such  as  

Mirantis  Fuel,  to  handle  all  networking  related  installation  and  configuration  tasks  on  OS  Controller  and  Compute  nodes.  

Fully  populated  8-­‐Rack  OpenStack  Pod  with  300  Dell  servers  and  Big  Cloud  Fabric  (P+V  Edition)  was  deployed  in  hours  using  Mirantis  Fuel  6.1  and  

tested  for  OpenStack  Neutron  scale  and  resilience.  

 Figure  1:  OpenStack  Deployment  using  Mirantis  Fuel  6.1  and  BCF  Controller  Dashboard  

Big  Cloud  Fabric    -­‐  OpenStack    Scale  Testing  

©  Big  Switch  Networks          2  

Solution  At  A  Glance  A  fully  populated  8-­‐rack  datacenter  Pod  (300  compute  nodes)  was  deployed  using  Mirantis  Fuel  6.1.  BCF  OpenStack  Installer  (BOSI)  was  used  to  deploy  Neutron  plugin  and  Horizon  extensions,  as  well  as  Switch  Light  VX  (a  user  space  software  agent  for  KVM-­‐based  virtual  switches  that  adds  advanced  functionality  and  improved  performance  on  top  of  the  Open  vSwitch  kernel)  on  all  compute  nodes.  Key  OpenStack  Neutron  enhancements  and  features  tested  include:  

§ Distributed  Virtual  Routing  &  Distributed  NAT  /  Floating  IP  –  Address  L3  agent  bottleneck  and  traffic  hair-­‐pinning  issues  § Simplified  Troubleshooting  –  End-­‐to-­‐end  visibility  across  physical  and  virtual  switches,  including  security  group  policies  

Big  Cloud  Fabric  &  Pod  Configuration  Details:                            OpenStack  Setup  Details:  

  Model  /  Specification   Quantity       Details  /  Specification  

Spine  Switches   Dell  S6000-­‐ON   4     OpenStack  Version   JUNO  on  Ubuntu  14.04.1  (2014.2.2-­‐6.1)  

Leaf  Switches   Dell  S4048-­‐ON   18     OpenStack  DHCP/Metadata  Agents   100  

Fuel  Master  Nodes   Dell  R220   1     Total  Projects  created   140  

OpenStack  Controller  Nodes  

Dell  R220   5     Total  Networks  created   1200  

OpenStack  Compute  Nodes  

Dell  R220   297     Mirantis  Fuel  Installer   Version  6.1  

BCF  SDN  Controller   BCF  Controller  Appliance  (Rev:  BL)  

2     BCF  Version   3.1.0  (BOSI  Version  2014.2.50)  

To  Learn  More  § Product  Overview  &  Demos:  More  details  available  online  at:  http://bigswitch.com/sdn-­‐products/big-­‐cloud-­‐fabric  

§ Big  Switch  Labs:  Get  hands-­‐on  experience  with  the  seamless  integration  of  OpenStack  and  Big  Cloud  Fabric  (P+V  Edition)  using  Big  Switch’s  Neutron  plugin.  Available  online,  for  free:  http://labs.bigswitch.com    

§ BCF  Starter  Kits:  Big  Switch  offers  this  fully  tested,  scalable  OpenStack  networking  solution  in  several  Big  Cloud  Fabric  starter  kits,  pre-­‐configured  with  hardware,  cables,  support  and  physical+virtual  Big  Cloud  Fabric  software  starting  at  $49k.    For  more  details,  download  the  brochure  at:  http://bigswitch.com/starter-­‐kits    

§ Test  Setup  Details:  Details  of  the  testing  installation  and  methodology  available  on  request.    Email  info@bigswitch.com.