1. Overview
   1. Mellanox Quantum Plugin
   2. Mellanox nova VIF Driver
   3. Prerequisite
2. Code Structure
3. Mellanox Quantum Plugin Installation
4. Mellanox Quantum Plugin Configuration
   1. Quantum Configuration
   2. Nova Configuration (compute node(s))
5. Additional Information

===============================================================================

Openstack Mellanox Quantum plugin supports Mellanox embedded switch functionality as part of the VPI (Ethernet/InfiniBand) HCA. Mellanox Quantum Plugin allows hardware vNICs (based on SR-IOV Virtual Functions) per each Virtual Machine vNIC to have its unique connectivity, security, and QoS attributes. Hardware vNICs can be mapped to the guest VMs through para-virtualization (using a Tap device), or directly as a Virtual PCI device to the guest, allowing higher performance and advanced features such as RDMA.

Hardware based switching, provides better performance, functionality, and security/isolation for virtual cloud environments. Future versions of the plug-in will include OpenFlow API to control and monitor the embedded switch and vNICs functionality

This plugin is implemented according to Plugin-Agent pattern.

	          +-----------------+                       +--------------+
              | Controller node |                       | Compute node |
    +-----------------------------------+     +-----------------------------------+
    |  +-----------+      +----------+  |     |  +----------+       +----------+  |
    |  |           |      |          |  |     |  |          |  zmq  |          |  |
    |  | Openstack | v2.0 | Mellanox |  | RPC |  | Mellanox |REQ/REP| Mellanox |  |
    |  | Quantum   +------+ Quantum  +-----------+ Quantum  +-------+ Embedded |  |
    |  |           |      | Plugin   |  |     |  | Agent    |       | Switch   |  |
    |  |           |      |          |  |     |  |          |       | (NIC)    |  |
    |  +-----------+      +----------+  |     |  +----------+       +----------+  |
    +-----------------------------------+     +-----------------------------------+

• Openstack Mellanox Quantum Plugin implements the Quantum v2.0 API.
• Mellanox Quantum Plugin processes the Quantum API calls and manages network segmentation ID allocation.
• The plugin uses Databsase to store configuration and allocation mapping.
• The plugin maintains compatibility to Linux Bridge Plugin support DHCP and L3 Agents by running L2 Linux Bridge Agent on Network Node.
• Mellanox Openstack Quantum Agent (L2 Agent) should run on each compute node.
• Agent should apply VIF connectivity based on mapping between a VIF (VM vNIC) and Embedded Switch port.

Mellanox Nova VIF driver should be used when running Mellanox Quantum Plugin. VIF driver supports VIF plugging by binding vNIC (Para-virtualized or SR-IOV with optional RDMA guest access) to the Embedded Switch port.

The following are the Mellanox Quantum Plugin prerequisites:

1. Compute nodes should be equiped with Mellanox ConnectX®-2/ConnectX®-3 Network Adapter.
2. OFED 2.0 installed.
3. eswitchd controller utility - An add-on user space software that manages HCA embedded switch via user space utilities should be installed

=============================================================================== Mellanox Quantum Plugin and supporting nova VIF driver are located at http://github.com/mellanox-openstack/mellanox-quantum-plugin

quantum/etc/quantum/plugins/mlnx -plugin configuration
mlnx_conf.ini - sample plugin configuration

quantum/quantum/plugins/mlnx -  plugin code   
/agent - Agent code
/common - common  code   
/db - plugin persistency model and wrapping methods
mlnx_plugin.py - Mellanox Openstack Plugin
rpc_callbacks.py - RPC handler for received messages
agent_notify_api.py - Agent RPC notify methods

Mellanox Quantum Plugin should be located under /quantum/quantum/plugins/

nova/nova/mlnx - nova vif driver code

Mellanox nova VIF driver should be located under /nova/virt/libvirt/

=============================================================================== For detailed installation guide please refer to http://github.com/mellanox-openstack/mellanox-quantum-plugin/install_guide

===============================================================================

1. Make the Mellanox plugin the current quantum plugin by edit quantum.conf and change the core_plugin

   core_plugin = quantum.plugins.mlnx.mlnx_plugin.MellanoxEswitchPlugin

2. Database configuration MySQL should be installed on the central server. A database named quantum should be created

3. Plugin configuration Edit the configuration file: etc/quantum/plugins/mlnx/mlnx_conf.ini

[DATABASE]
sql_connection - must match the mysql configuration

[VLANS]
tenant_network_type - must be set on of supported tenant network types

network_vlan_ranges - must be configured to specify the names of the physical networks
                     managed by the mellanox plugin, along with the ranges of VLAN IDs
                     available on each physical network for allocation to virtual networks. 

[AGENT]
polling_interval - interfval to poll for existing vNICs
rpc  - must be set to True

[ESWITCH]
physical_interface_mapping -  the network_interface_mappings maps each physical network name
                             to the physical interface (on top of Mellanox Adapter) connecting 
							 the node to that physical network. 

For Plugin consfiguration file example, please refer to

http://github.com/mellanox-openstack/mellanox-quantum-plugin/quantum/etc/quantum/plugins/mlnx/mlnx_conf.ini

Edit the nova.conf file

compute_driver=nova.virt.libvirt.driver.LibvirtDriver
connection_type=libvirt
libvirt_vif_driver=nova.virt.libvirt.mlnx.vif.MlxEthVIFDriver

vnic_type= direct 

fabric=default - specifies physical network for vNICs

quantum_use_dhcp=true

=============================================================================== For more details, please refer your question to openstack@mellanox.com