CORD Quick Start Guide using Physical Nodes

This guide is meant to enable the user to utilize the artifacts of this repository to to deploy CORD on to a physical hardware rack. The artifacts in this repository will deploy CORD against a standard physical rack wired according to the best practices as defined in this document.

NOTE: If you are new to CORD, you should start by bringing up a development POD on a single physical server to get familiar with the CORD deployment process. Instructions to do so are in quickstart.md.

Physical configuration

Physical Hardware Connectivity

As depicted in the diagram above the base model for the CORD POD deployment contains:

4 OF switches comprising the leaf - spine fabric utilized for data traffic
4 compute nodes with with 2 40G ports and 2 1G ports
1 top of rack (TOR) switch utilized for management communications

The best practices in terms of connecting the components of the CORD POD include:

Leaf nodes are connected to the spines nodes starting at the highest port number on the leaf.
For a given leaf node, its connection to the spine nodes terminate on the same port number on each spine.
Leaf n connections to spine nodes terminate at port n on each spine node.
Leaf spine switches are connected into the management TOR starting from the highest port number.
Compute nodes 40G interfaces are named eth0 and eth1.
Compute nodes 10G interfaces are named eth2 and eth3.
Compute node n is connected to the management TOR switch on port n, egressing from the compute node at eth2.
Compute node n is connected to its primary leaf, egressing at eth0 and terminating on the leaf at port n.
Compute node n is connected to its secondary leaf, egressing at eth1 and terminating on the leaf at port n.
eth3 on the head node is the uplink from the POD to the Internet.

The following assumptions are made about the phyical CORD POD being deployed:

The leaf - spine switchs are Accton 6712s
The compute nodes are using 40G Intel NIC cards
The compute node that is to be designated the head node has Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installed.

Prerequisite: Vagrant is installed and operationally. Note: This quick start guide has only been tested against Vagrant and VirtualBox, specially on MacOS.

Bootstrap the Head Node

The head node is the key to the physical deployment of a CORD POD. The automated deployment of the physical POD is designed such that the head node is manually deployed, with the aid of automation tools, such as Ansible and from this head node the rest of the POD deployment is automated.

The head node can be deployed either from a node outside the CORD POD or by deploying from the head to the head node. The procedure in each scenario is slightly different because during the bootstrapping of the head node it is possible that the interfaces needed to be renamed and the system to be rebooted. This guide assumes that the head node is being bootstrapped from a host outside of the POD (OtP).

Clone the Repository

To clone the repository, on your OtP build host issue the git command:

git clone http://gerrit.opencord.org/cord

Complete

When this is complete, a listing (ls) of this directory should yield output similar to:

ls
LICENSE.txt        ansible/           components/        gradle/            gradlew.bat        utils/
README.md          build.gradle       config/            gradle.properties  scripts/
Vagrantfile        buildSrc/          docs/              gradlew*           settings.gradle

Create the Development Machine

The development environment is required for the tasks in this repository. This environment leverages Vagrant to install the tools required to build and deploy the CORD software.

To create the development machine the following Vagrant command can be used. This will create an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS based virtual machine and install some basic required packages, such as Docker, Docker Compose, and Oracle Java 8.

vagrant up corddev

NOTE: It may takes several minutes for the first command vagrant up corddev to complete as it will include creating the VM as well as downloading and installing various software packages.

Complete

Once the Vagrant VM is created and provisioned, you will see output ending with:

==> corddev: PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
==> corddev: localhost                  : ok=29   changed=25   unreachable=0    failed=0
==> corddev: Configuring cache buckets...

Connect to the Development Machine

To connect to the development machine the following vagrant command can be used.

vagrant ssh corddev

Once connected to the Vagrant machine, you can find the deployment artifacts in the /cord directory on the VM.

cd /cord

Gradle

Gradle is the build tool that is used to help orchestrate the build and deployment of a POD. A launch script is included in the Vagrant machine that will automatically download and install gradle. The script is called gradlew and the download / install will be invoked on the first use of this script; thus the first use may take a little longer than subsequent invocations and requires a connection to the internet.

Complete

Once you have created and connected to the development environment this task is complete. The cord repository files can be found on the development machine under /cord. This directory is mounted from the host machine so changes made to files in this directory will be reflected on the host machine and vice-versa.

Fetch

The fetching phase of the deployment pulls Docker images from the public repository down to the local machine as well as clones any git submodules that are part of the project. This phase can be initiated with the following command:

./gradlew fetch

Complete

Once the fetch command has successfully been run, this step is complete. After this command completes you should be able to see the Docker images that were downloaded using the docker images command on the development machine:

docker images
REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
python              2.7-alpine          836fa7aed31d        5 days ago          56.45 MB
consul              <none>              62f109a3299c        2 weeks ago         41.05 MB
registry            2.4.0               8b162eee2794        9 weeks ago         171.1 MB
abh1nav/dockerui    latest              6e4d05915b2a        19 months ago       469.5 MB

Build Images

Bare metal provisioning leverages utilities built and packaged as Docker container images. These utilities are:

cord-maas-bootstrap - (directory: bootstrap) run at MAAS installation time to customize the MAAS instance via REST interfaces
cord-maas-automation - (directory: automation) daemon on the head node to automate PXE booted servers through the MAAS bare metal deployment work flow
cord-maas-switchq - (directory: switchq) daemon on the head node that watches for new switches being added to the POD and triggers provisioning when a switch is identified (via the OUI on MAC address).
cord-maas-provisioner - (directory: provisioner) daemon on the head node to managing the execution of ansible playbooks against switches and compute nodes as they are added to the POD.
cord-ip-allocator - (directr: ip-allocator) daemon on the head node used to allocate IP address for the fabric interfaces.
cord-dhcp-harvester - (directory: harvester) run on the head node to facilitate CORD / DHCP / DNS integration so that all hosts can be resolved via DNS
opencord/mavenrepo
cord-test/nose
cord-test/quagga
cord-test/radius
onosproject/onos

The images can be built by using the following command. This will build all the images.

./gradlew buildImages

NOTE: The first time you run ./gradlew it will download from the Internet the gradle binary and install it locally. This is a one time operation.

Complete

Once the buildImages command successfully runs this task is complete. The CORD artifacts have been built and the Docker images can be viewed by using the docker images command on the development machine.

docker images --format 'table {{.Repository}}\t{{.Tag}}\t{{.Size}}\t{{.ID}}'
REPOSITORY               TAG                 SIZE                IMAGE ID
cord-maas-switchq        latest              781 MB              4736cc8c4f71
cord-provisioner         latest              814.6 MB            50ab479e4b52
cord-dhcp-harvester      latest              60.67 MB            88f900d74f19
cord-maas-bootstrap      latest              367.5 MB            19bde768c786
cord-maas-automation     latest              366.8 MB            1e2ab7242060
cord-ip-allocator        latest              324.3 MB            f8f2849107f6
opencord/mavenrepo       latest              434.2 MB            9d1ad7214262
cord-test/nose           latest              1.028 GB            67b996f2ad19
cord-test/quagga         latest              454.4 MB            b46f7dd20bdf
cord-test/radius         latest              312.1 MB            e09d78aef295
onosproject/onos         <none>              825.6 MB            309088c647cf
python                   2.7-alpine          56.45 MB            836fa7aed31d
golang                   1.6-alpine          282.9 MB            d688f409d292
golang                   alpine              282.9 MB            d688f409d292
ubuntu                   14.04               196.6 MB            38c759202e30
consul                   <none>              41.05 MB            62f109a3299c
nginx                    latest              182.7 MB            0d409d33b27e
registry                 2.4.0               171.1 MB            8b162eee2794
swarm                    <none>              19.32 MB            47dc182ea74b
nginx                    <none>              182.7 MB            3c69047c6034
hbouvier/docker-radius   latest              280.9 MB            5d5d3c0a91b0
abh1nav/dockerui         latest              469.5 MB            6e4d05915b2a

NOTE: Not all the above Docker images were built by the buildImages command. Some of them, list golang, are used as a base for other Docker images; and some, like abh1nav/dockerui were downloaded when the development machine was created with vagrant up.

Deployment Configuration File

The commands to deploy the POD can be customized via a deployment configuration file. The file is in YAML.

To construct a configuration file for yoru physical POD you should copy the sample deployment configuration found in config/sample.yml and modify the values to fit your physical deployment.

Prime the Target server

The target server is the server that will assume the role of the head node in the cord POD. Priming this server consists of deploying some base software that is required to deploy the base software, such as a docker registry. Having the docker registry on the target server allows the deployment process to push images to the target server that are used in the reset of the process, thus making the head node a self contained deployment.

./gradlew -PdeployConfig=config/podX.yml prime

Complete

Once the prime command successfully runs this task is complete. When this step is complete a Docker registry and Docker registry mirror. It can be verified that these are running by using the docker ps command.

docker ps --format 'table {{.ID}}\t{{.Image}}\t{{.Command}}\t{{.CreatedAt}}'
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED AT
5f1cbebe7e61        registry:2.4.0      "/bin/registry serve "   2016-07-13 17:03:08 +0000 UTC
6d3a911e5323        registry:2.4.0      "/bin/registry serve "   2016-07-13 17:03:08 +0000 UTC

Publish

Publishing consists of pushing the build docker images to the Docker repository on the target head node. This step can take a while as it has to transfer all the image from the development machine to the target head node. This step is started with the following command:

./gradlew -PtargetReg=<head-node-ip-address>:5000 publish

Complete

Once the publish command successfully runs this task is complete. When this step is complete it can be verified by performing a query on the target server's Docker registry using the following command on the development machine.

curl -sS http://head-node-ip-address:5000/v2/_catalog | jq .
{
  "repositories": [
    "consul",
    "cord-dhcp-harvester",
    "cord-ip-allocator",
    "cord-maas-automation",
    "cord-maas-bootstrap",
    "cord-maas-switchq",
    "cord-provisioner",
    "mavenrepo",
    "nginx",
    "onosproject/onos",
    "swarm"
  ]
}

Deploy Bare Metal Provisioning Capabilities

There are three parts to deploying bare metal: deploying the head node PXE server (MAAS), PXE booting a compute node, and post deployment provisioning of the compute node. These tasks are accomplished utilizing additionally Vagrant machines as well as executing gradle tasks in the Vagrant development machine.

Deploy MAAS

Canonical MAAS provides the PXE and other bare metal provisioning services for CORD and will be deployed on the head node.

./gradlew deployBase

This task can take some time so be patient. It should complete without errors, so if an error is encountered something went Horribly Wrong (tm). See the Getting Help section.

Complete

This step is complete when the command successfully runs. The Web UI for MAAS can be viewed by browsing to the target machine using a URL of the form http://head-node-ip-address/MAAS.

After the deployBase command install MAAS, it initiates the download of an Ubuntu 14.04 boot image that will be used to boot the other POD servers. This download can take some time and the process cannot continue until the download is complete. The status of the download can be verified through the UI by visiting the URL http://head-node-ip-address/MAAS/images/, or via the command line from head node via the following commands:

APIKEY=$(sudo maas-region-admin apikey --user=cord)
maas login cord http://localhost/MAAS/api/1.0 "$APIKEY"
maas cord boot-resources read | jq 'map(select(.type != "Synced"))'

It the output of of the above commands is not a empty list, [], then the images have not yet been completely downloaded. depending on your network speed this could take several minutes. Please wait and then attempt the last command again until the returned list is empty, []. When the list is empty you can proceed.

Browse around the UI and get familiar with MAAS via documentation at http://maas.io

Deploy XOS

XOS provides service provisioning and orchestration for the CORD POD. To deploy XOS to the head node use the following command:

./gradlew deployPlatform

This task can take some time so be patient. It should complete without errors, so if an error is encountered something went Horribly Wrong (tm). See the Getting Help section.

Complete

This step is complete when the command successfully runs. The deployment of XOS includes a deployment of Open Stack.

Booting Compute Nodes

Network configuration

The proposed configuration for a CORD POD is has the following network configuration on the head node:

eth0 / eth1 - 40G interfaces, not relevant for the test environment.
eth2 - the interface on which the head node supports PXE boots and is an internally interface to which all the compute nodes connected
eth3 - WAN link. the head node will NAT from eth2 to eth3
mgmtbr - Not associated with a physical network and used to connect in the VM created by the openstack install that is part of XOS

The Ansible scripts configure MAAS to support DHCP/DNS/PXE on the eth2 and mgmtbr interfaces.

Once it has been verified that the ubuntu boot image has been downloaded the compute nodes may be PXE booted.

Note: In order to ensure that the compute node PXE boot the bios settings may have to be adjusted. Additionally, the remote power management on the compute nodes must be enabled.

The compute node will boot, register with MAAS, and then be shut off. After this is complete an entry for the node will be in the MAAS UI at http://head-node-ip-address/MAAS/#/nodes. It will be given a random hostname made up, in the Canonical way, of a adjective and an noun, such as popular-feast.cord.lab. The name will be different for every deployment. The new node will be in the New state.

As the machines boot they should be automatically transitioned from New through the states of Commissioning and Acquired to Deployed.

Post Deployment Provisioning of the Compute Node

Once the node is in the Deployed state, it will be provisioned for use in a CORD POD by the execution of an Ansible playbook.

Complete

Once the compute node is in the Deployed state and post deployment provisioning on the compute node is complete, this task is complete.

Logs of the post deployment provisioning of the compute nodes can be found in /etc/maas/ansible/logs on the head node.

Assitionally, the post deployment provisioning of the compute nodes can be queried from the provision service using curl

curl -sS http://$(docker inspect --format '{{.NetworkSettings.Networks.maas_default.IPAddress}}' provisioner):4243/provision/ | jq '[.[] | { "status": .status, "name": .request.Info.name}]'
[
  {
    "message": "",
    "name": "steel-ghost.cord.lab",
    "status": 2
  },
  {
    "message": "",
    "name": "feline-shirt.cord.lab",
    "status": 2
  },
  {
    "message": "",
    "name": "yellow-plot.cord.lab",
    "status": 2
  }
]

In the above a "status" of 2 means that the provisioning is complete. The other values that status might hold are:

0 - Pending, the request has been accepted by the provisioner but not yet started
1 - Running, the request is being processed and the node is being provisioned
2 - Complete, the provisioning has been completed successfully
3 - Failed, the provisioning has failed and the message will be populated with the exit message from provisioning.

Booting OpenFlow switches

Once the compute nodes have begun their boot process you may also boot the switches that support the leaf spine fabric. These switches should ONIE install boot and download their boot image from MAAS.

Complete

This step is complete when the command completes successfully. You can verify the provisioning of the false switch by querying the provisioning service using curl.

curl -sS http://$(docker inspect --format '{{.NetworkSettings.Networks.maas_default.IPAddress}}' provisioner):4243/provision/ | jq '[.[] | { "status": .status, "name": .request.Info.name, "message": .message}]'
[
  {
    "message": "",
    "name": "leaf-1",
    "status": 2
  },
  {
    "message": "",
    "name": "leaf-2",
    "status": 2
  },
  {
    "message": "",
    "name": "spine-1",
    "status": 2
  },
  {
    "message": "",
    "name": "spine-2",
    "status": 2
  }
]

In the above a "status" of 2 means that the provisioning is complete. The other values that status might hold are:

0 - Pending, the request has been accepted by the provisioner but not yet started
1 - Running, the request is being processed and the node is being provisioned
2 - Complete, the provisioning has been completed successfully
3 - Failed, the provisioning has failed and the message will be populated with the exit message from provisioning.

Post Deployment Configuration of XOS and ONOS

The compute node provisioning process described above (under Booting Compute Nodes) will install the servers as OpenStack compute nodes. You should be able to see them on the CORD head node by running the following commands:

source ~/admin-openrc.sh
nova hypervisor-list

You will see output like the following (showing each of the nodes you have provisioned):

+----+-------------------------+
| ID | Hypervisor hostname     |
+----+-------------------------+
| 1  | nova-compute-1.cord.lab |
+----+-------------------------+

However, after the compute nodes are provisioned, currently some additional manual configuration is required to set up the ONOS services in XOS. We intend to automate this process in the future, but for the time being the following steps must be carried out.

To prepare to run these steps, on the CORD head node, login to the XOS VM and change to the service-profiles/cord-pod directory:

ssh ubuntu@xos
cd service-profiles/cord-pod

All of the steps listed below are run in this directory.

Add the Nodes to XOS

To create entries for the newly provisioned nodes in XOS, run the following command:

make new-nodes

VTN Configuration

XOS maintains the network configuration of the ONOS VTN app and pushes this configuration to ONOS. Information for new nodes must be manually added to XOS. XOS will generate the VTN network configuration from this information and push it to ONOS.

A script called make-vtn-external-yaml.sh can be used to create a TOSCA template for the VTN information maintained by XOS. To run it:

rm vtn-external.yaml; make vtn-external.yaml

This will generate a TOSCA file called vtn-external.yaml that is used to store the network information required by VTN in XOS. The information in this TOSCA file closely maps onto the fields in the VTN ONOS app's network configuration. For example, in vtn-external.yaml, under the properties field of service#vtn, you will see fields such as privateGatewayMac, localManagementIp, and ovsdbPort; these correspond to the fields of the same name in VTN's network configuration.

The vtn-external.yaml file is generated with the information that applies to the single-node CORD POD. You will need to change the values of some fields in this file for your POD. For each OpenStack compute node (e.g., nova-compute-1.cord.lab), you will see the following in vtn-external.yaml:

    nova-compute-1.cord.lab:
      type: tosca.nodes.Node

    # VTN bridgeId field for node nova-compute-1.cord.lab
    nova-compute-1.cord.lab_bridgeId_tag:
      type: tosca.nodes.Tag
      properties:
          name: bridgeId
          value: of:0000000000000001
      requirements:
          - target:
              node: nova-compute-1.cord.lab
              relationship: tosca.relationships.TagsObject
          - service:
              node: service#ONOS_CORD
              relationship: tosca.relationships.MemberOfService

    # VTN dataPlaneIntf field for node nova-compute-1.cord.lab
    nova-compute-1.cord.lab_dataPlaneIntf_tag:
      type: tosca.nodes.Tag
      properties:
          name: dataPlaneIntf
          value: fabric
      requirements:
          - target:
              node: nova-compute-1.cord.lab
              relationship: tosca.relationships.TagsObject
          - service:
              node: service#ONOS_CORD
              relationship: tosca.relationships.MemberOfService

    # VTN dataPlaneIp field for node nova-compute-1.cord.lab
    nova-compute-1.cord.lab_dataPlaneIp_tag:
      type: tosca.nodes.Tag
      properties:
          name: dataPlaneIp
          value: 10.168.0.253/24
      requirements:
          - target:
              node: nova-compute-1.cord.lab
              relationship: tosca.relationships.TagsObject
          - service:
              node: service#ONOS_CORD
              relationship: tosca.relationships.MemberOfService

The above YAML stores node-specific fields required by VTN:

bridgeId: the unique device ID of the integration bridge
dataPlaneIntf: data network interface
dataPlaneIp: data network IP of the machine

You will need to edit the above values to reflect the desired configuration for each compute node. For more details on the format of VTN's network configuration, see the VTN Network Configuration Guide.

Fabric Gateway Configuration

To configure the fabric gateway, you will need to edit the file cord-services.yaml. You will see a section that looks like this:

    addresses_vsg:
      type: tosca.nodes.AddressPool
      properties:
          addresses: 10.168.0.0/24
          gateway_ip: 10.168.0.1
          gateway_mac: 02:42:0a:a8:00:01

Edit this section so that it reflects the fabric's address block assigned to the vSGs, as well as the gateway IP and MAC address that the vSGs should use to reach the Internet.

Update Information in XOS

Once the vtn-external.yaml and cord-services.yaml files have been edited as described above, push them to XOS by running the following:

make vtn
make cord

Complete

This step is complete once you see the new information for the VTN app in XOS and ONOS.

To check the VTN configuration maintained by XOS:

Go to the "ONOS apps" page in the CORD GUI:
- URL: http://<head-node>:8888/admin/onos/onosapp/
- Username: padmin@vicci.org
- Password: letmein
Select VTN_ONOS_app in the table
Verfy that the Backend status text has a green check with the message successfully enacted
Select Attributes tab
Look for the rest_onos/v1/network/configuration/ attribute. Verify that its value looks correct for the VTN app's network configuration.

To check that the network configuration has been successfully pushed to the ONOS VTN app and processed by it:

Log into ONOS from the head node
- Command: ssh -p 8101 karaf@onos-cord
- Password: karaf
Run the cordvtn-nodes command
Verify that the information for all nodes is correct
Verify that the initialization status of all nodes is COMPLETE

This will look like the following:

$ ssh -p 8101 karaf@onos-cord
Password authentication
Password: # the password is 'karaf'
Welcome to Open Network Operating System (ONOS)!
     ____  _  ______  ____
    / __ \/ |/ / __ \/ __/
   / /_/ /    / /_/ /\ \
   \____/_/|_/\____/___/

Documentation: wiki.onosproject.org
Tutorials:     tutorials.onosproject.org
Mailing lists: lists.onosproject.org

Come help out! Find out how at: contribute.onosproject.org

Hit '<tab>' for a list of available commands
and '[cmd] --help' for help on a specific command.
Hit '<ctrl-d>' or type 'system:shutdown' or 'logout' to shutdown ONOS.

onos> cordvtn-nodes
hostname=nova-compute-1, hostMgmtIp=192.168.122.140/24, dpIp=10.168.0.253/24, br-int=of:0000000000000001, dpIntf=fabric, init=COMPLETE
Total 1 nodes

Getting Help

If it seems that something has gone wrong with your setup, there are a number of ways that you can get help -- in the documentation on the OpenCORD wiki, on the OpenCORD Slack channel (get an invitation here), or on the CORD-discuss mailing list.

See the How to Contribute to CORD wiki page for more information.