ovs Archives - Network Engineer Blog – Giang Pham | CCIEx2 #42780 (SP,DC) | AWS

This is part 2 of the deep-dive series into OpenStack networking with Cisco ACI Opflex integration. In the previous post, I have described the different integration modes between ACI and OpenStack (ML2 vs. GBP, OpFlex vs. non OpFlex). We have also seen the constructs (tenants/VRF/BD/EPG/contracts) that the plugin creates automatically on ACI when we create OpenStack objects, as well as the distributed routing feature of the OpFlex OVS.

In this part, we will do some deep-dive into the distributed DHCP and Neutron metadata optimization of the OpFlex agent, i.e. how the OpenStack instances get their IP addresses and metadata with the integration plugin.

This is the follow-up of my previous post on the installation of the ACI Openstack integration plugin (OpFlex mode) in my lab. In this blog post, we will take a step back and discuss why we would want to integrate ACI with OpenStack in the first place, the benefits of the integration (especially OpFlex mode), the different integration modes (ML2 vs. GBP, OpFlex vs. non OpFlex) and the decision to choose one.

You may also find very good details on this topic covered in Cisco ACI Unified Plug-in for OpenStack Architectural Overview document. I am not trying to make a full clone of the whitepaper here, but will summarize some key points and provide demonstrations specific for our previous lab setup with some packet capture to illustrate the networking features that we have discussed.