This is a Modular Layer 2 Neutron Mechanism driver. The mechanism driver is responsible for applying configuration information to hardware equipment. GenericSwitch provides a pluggable framework to implement functionality required for use-cases like OpenStack Ironic multi-tenancy mode. It abstracts applying changes to all switches managed by this ML2 plugin and handling local_link_information field of Neutron port.

• Code: http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/networking-generic-switch
• Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/networking-generic-switch
• Docs: TBD

• Cisco IOS switches
• OpenVSwitch
• Arista EOS

This Mechanism Driver architecture allows easily to add more devices of any type.

OpenStack Neutron v2.0 => ML2 plugin => Generic Mechanism Driver => Device plugin

As example plugins, Cisco IOS and Linux OpenVSwitch are provided. These device plugins use Netmiko library, which in turn uses Paramiko library to access and configure the switches via SSH protocol.

In order to use this mechanism the generic configuration file needs to be created/updated with the appropriate configuration information. Here is an example of /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/ml2_conf_genericswitch.ini for the Cisco IOS device:

[genericswitch:sw-hostname]
device_type = netmiko_cisco_ios
username = admin
password = password
secret = secret
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>

for the Huawei device:

[genericswitch:sw-hostname]
device_type = netmiko_huawei
username = admin
password = password
secret = secret
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>

for the Arista EOS device:

[genericswitch:arista-hostname]
device_type = netmiko_arista_eos
ip = <switch mgmt ip address>
username = admin
key_file = /opt/data/arista_key

Additionally the GenericSwitch mechanism driver needs to be enabled from the ml2 config file /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/ml2_conf.ini:

[ml2]
tenant_network_types = vlan
type_drivers = local,flat,vlan,gre,vxlan
mechanism_drivers = openvswitch,genericswitch
...
...

(Re)start neutron-server specifying this additional configuration file:

neutron-server \
    --config-file /etc/neutron/neutron.conf \
    --config-file /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/ml2_conf.ini \
    --config-file /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/ml2_conf_genericswitch.ini