© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 1

Kyle Mestery

Principal Engineer, Office of the Cloud CTO, Cisco

Neutron Modular Layer 2 (ML2)Overview

© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2

What is Ml2?• Original Goal:

The Modular Layer 2 (ML2) Plugin is a framework allowing OpenStack Networking to simultaneously utilize the variety of layer 2 networking technologies found in complex real-world datacenters.

• ML2 was designed to ease the burden of adding new L2 networking technologies into OpenStack Networking.

• ML2 will deprecate the Open vSwitch, LinuxBridge, and Hyper-V monolithic Neutron Plugins

It works with each of their existing L2 agents simultaneously

© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 3

ML2 “Drivers”• ML2 exposes two different types of drivers: “Type” and “Mechanism”

• ML2 TypeDrivers:Maintain type-specific stateProvide tenant network allocationValidate provider networksCurrent TypeDrivers:

local, flat, VLAN, GRE, and VXLAN

• ML2 MechanismDrivers:Responsible for taking information supplied by TypeDrivers and ensuring it is properly applied given the specific networking mechanisms which have been enabledCurrent MechanismDrivers:

Arista, Cisco Nexus, Hyper-V, L2 Population, LinuxBridge, Open vSwitch, Tail-F NCS

© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 4

ML2 TypeDrivers• Maintain type-specific state

• Provide tenant network allocation

• Validate provider networks

• Current TypeDrivers:local, flat, VLAN, GRE, and VXLAN

© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 5

ML2 MechanismDrivers• Responsible for taking information supplied by TypeDrivers and ensuring it is properly

applied given the specific networking mechanisms which have been enabled

• Current MechanismDrivers:Arista, Cisco Nexus, Hyper-V, L2 Population, LinuxBridge, Open vSwitch, Tail-F NCS

• MechanismDrivers can work with many different technologies:Agent based MechanismDrivers (Hyper-V, LinuxBridge, and OVS)Controller based MechanismDrivers (Tail-F NCS and OpenDaylight)ToR switch MechanismDrivers (Arista and Cisco Nexus)

© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 6

Modular Layer 2 Diagram

Neutron Server

ML2 Plugin

Type Manager Mechanism Manager

VLA

NTypeD

river

GR

ETypeD

river

VX

LAN

TypeDriver

OV

S/

LinuxBridge

Cisco

Nexus

Arista

L2 P

opulation

Tail-F NC

S

API Extensions

Hyper-V