on 23-May-2014 15:24
Last week at the OpenStack Summit in Atlanta, F5 announced OpenStack support for the BIG-IP and BIG-IQ platforms. The first of these integrations, a BIG-IP OpenStack Neutron LBaaS plug-in, is now available for Developer use. The integration supports production ready use cases and provides a comprehensive OpenStack integration with F5’s Software Defined Application Services (SDAS).
Why is F5 integrating with OpenStack?
F5 has been working with the OpenStack community since 2012. As a OpenStack Foundation sponsor, F5 is excited about creating choice for cloud platform rollouts. We want to ensure that our customers have access to F5 built solutions when evaluating cloud platform integrations. As a result, F5 decided to add OpenStack support based on customer feedback and OpenStack production readiness.
What is available for download and do I need a special license to use it?
The OpenStack plug-ins are a package of Python scripts that help the OpenStack Controller integrate with the F5 BIG-IP and BIG-IQ platforms. As long as a customer has license for BIG-IP or the BIG-IQ solution, they can use these scripts. No separate license will be required to use the OpenStack plug-ins.
The BIG-IP OpenStack Neutron LBaaS integration is now available for download. You can access the plug-in Read Me and get the package for the BIG-IP LBaaS plug-in driver/agent from this download location. The plug-in has been tested with OpenStack HAVANA Release. The LBaaS plug-in for BIG-IQ will be available later this summer..
F5 has also announced an upgrade to the BIG-IQ OpenStack Connector supporting the HAVANA release. The upgraded connector will be released as part of the BIG-IQ Early Access (EA) program later this month and will ship in the BIG-IQ release later this summer. Please contact your regional sales representative to get access via the BIG-IQ EA program.
What does the BIG-IP LBaaS plug-in do?
The F5 BIG-IP LBaaS plug-in for OpenStack allows Neutron, the networking component of OpenStack, to provision load balancing services on BIG-IP devices or virtual editions, either through the LBaaS API or through the OpenStack dashboard (Horizon). Supported provisioning actions include selecting an LB provider, load balancing method, defining health monitors, setting up Virtual IP addresses (VIP), and putting application instance member pools behind a VIP. This setup will allow F5 customers to seamlessly integrate BIG-IP SDAS into their OpenStack Neutron network layer and load balance their applications running in the OpenStack Nova compute environment.
The APIs for the LBaaS plug-in are defined by the OpenStack community. The BIG-IP LBaaS plug-in supports the community API specification. F5 will enhance the plug-in when additional capabilities are defined in future versions of OpenStack.
What Use Cases does the LBaaS plug-in support?
The five example use cases described below help demonstrate the flexibility of F5’s support for OpenStack. The scenarios described below are production quality use cases, with detailed videos available on this OpenStack DevCentral Community and on F5’s YouTube Channel.
Use Case 1: Extend an existing Data Center network into an OpenStack Cloud
Video: https://devcentral.f5.com/s/videos/using-f5s-lbaas-plug-in-for-openstack-to-extend-your-data-center
Summary:
Benefit: Extend the cloud using a vendor-neutral API specification (OpenStack Neutron LBaaS) to provide application delivery services via F5 BIG-IP.
Use Case 2: Use F5 LBaaS to provision VLANs as a tenant virtualization technology – i.e. VLANs defined by the admin tenant for other tenants or by the tenant themselves.
Video: https://devcentral.f5.com/s/videos/lbaas-plug-in-for-openstack-to-provision-vlans
Summary:
Benefit: This use case allows tenant networks to be extended beyond the OpenStack cloud to traditional and virtual networks with Layer 2 segmentation based on VLANs.
Use Case 3: Software Defined Networking by using GRE/VXLAN as an overlay for tenant virtualization.
Summary:
Benefit: This use case allows tenant networks to be extended beyond the OpenStack cloud to traditional and virtual networks with Layer 2 segmentation based on GRE or VXLAN overlays.
Use Case 4: Use F5 as a network services proxy between tenant GRE or VXLAN.
Summary:
Benefit: In this use case, the tenant may have multiple network services running on either Layer 2 VLANs or GRE/VXLAN tunnels. F5’s LBaaS agent acts as a proxy between these segments enabling inter-segment packet routing.
Use Case 5: Using the BIG-IQ's connector to orchestrate load balancing and F5 iApps in an OpenStack Cloud.
Video: https://devcentral.f5.com/s/videos/delivering-lbaas-in-openstack-with-f5s-big-iq
Summary:
Benefit: Cross-platform management and ability to define VIP placement policies based on business and infrastructure needs.
What help is available when using F5’s OpenStack integrations?
The BIG-IP plug-in is supported via the DevCentral OpenStack Community. You can post your questions in the OpenStack Questions and Answers section of the community. You can also use F5 Support services for issues with the iControl APIs and BIG-IP devices or virtual editions.
One last time, where can I find the Read Me and the BIG-IP LBaaS plug-in driver/agent?
Download the Read Me and the BIG-IP LBaaS plug-in driver/agent from this download location.