So far in this chapter, we have presented a high-level view of the OpenContrail architecture. We have also seen how to install and do basic operations with OpenContrail. We will end this chapter with an overview of the integration between OpenStack and OpenContrail. A more hands-on detail of this integration will be shared in the next chapter.
Neutron is the networking project within the OpenStack platform. As an SDN platform, it is natural that OpenContrail integrates with OpenStack Neutron using a plugin. Since OpenContrail supports a large set of networking services, it is configured as a core plugin in Neutron.
In addition to Neutron, OpenContrail also responds to port creation requests from Nova. Once a virtual machine instance is created by Nova, the Nova agent requests the creation of logical ports to provide network connectivity to that virtual machine. This request is sent by the Nova agent to the local vRouter agent on the Compute...