Chapter 1, OpenStack Networking Components – an Overview, provides an introduction to OpenStack Networking features, components, and the basic physical architectures required to support an OpenStack cloud.

Chapter 2, Installing OpenStack Using RDO, provides instructions for installing the Liberty release of OpenStack using RDO on the CentOS 7.1 operating system.

Chapter 3, Neutron API Basics, looks at the core components of the Neutron API, made up of networks, subnets, and ports, and how they're used to construct virtual networks.

Chapter 4, Interfacing with Neutron, explores the use of the Horizon dashboard and the Neutron command-line client to interface with the Neutron API.

Chapter 5, Switching, looks at how Neutron constructs and implements the virtual network infrastructure to enable the flow of traffic across the cloud.

Chapter 6, Routing, discusses how Neutron implements virtual routers that provide routing between Neutron networks and the outside world using source network address translation and floating IPs.

Chapter 7, Building Networks and Routers, covers basic virtual network architectures and showcases the traffic flow from client workstations to virtual machine instances via fixed and floating IPs.

Chapter 8, Security Group Fundamentals, examines the use of Neutron security groups to secure instance traffic at the virtual switch port and walks you through creating and managing security groups and associated rules.

Appendix, Configuring VirtualBox, is meant to assist with the setup of a virtual environment using VirtualBox so that many of the examples throughout the book can be followed.

For this book, the following is required:

This book assumes a beginner-to-moderate level of networking experience and experience with Linux operating systems. While this book will walk you through a basic installation of OpenStack using RDO, little time will be spent on services other than Neutron as well as any configuration of OpenStack outside of what's available via the API. It will be helpful for you have a basic understanding of OpenStack and its components prior to reading this book.

Internet connectivity is required to install OpenStack packages. An all-in-one OpenStack deployment will be performed on a single virtual machine within VirtualBox. CentOS must be installed prior to installing RDO. Alternative virtualization platforms such as VMware, or physical hardware, are optional.

Major OpenStack releases occur every 6 months, and after the N or O release, Liberty repositories may no longer be available. In the event that the OpenStack installation procedure documented in this book no longer functions properly, refer to the installation guide at http://docs.openstack.org/ or https://www.rdoproject.org/ for instructions on installing the latest version of OpenStack.

The book is for those who are new to OpenStack and Neutron and want to learn OpenStack networking fundamentals. It introduces the reader to OpenStack networking and related concepts and technologies. Some prior networking and systems administration experience is recommended. A virtual or physical server is recommended to follow along with the concepts demonstrated in the book.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "In a reference implementation, a Neutron DHCP agent runs on one or more infrastructure nodes and spawns a dnsmasq process for each network where DHCP is enabled."

A block of code is set as follows:

[general]

# Generic config options
CONFIG_UNSUPPORTED=n
CONFIG_DEBUG_MODE=n
CONFIG_PROVISION_DEMO=n

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ sudo ifdown enp0s3; sudo ifdown enp0s9;
$ sudo ifup enp0s3; sudo ifup enp0s9;

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "In addition, controller nodes run the database and messaging servers and are often the point of management of the cloud via the Horizon dashboard."

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