OpenStack Operations Guide

Chapter 7. Network Design

OpenStack provides a rich networking environment, and this chapter details the requirements and options to deliberate when designing your cloud.

Warning

If this is the first time you are deploying a cloud infrastructure in your organization, after reading this section, your first conversations should be with your networking team. Network usage in a running cloud is vastly different from traditional network deployments and has the potential to be disruptive at both a connectivity and a policy level.

For example, you must plan the number of IP addresses that you need for both your guest instances as well as management infrastructure. Additionally, you must research and discuss cloud network connectivity through proxy servers and firewalls.

In this chapter, we’ll give some examples of network implementations to consider and provide information about some of the network layouts that OpenStack uses. Finally, we have some brief notes on the networking services that are essential for stable operation.

Management Network

A management network (a separate network for use by your cloud operators) typically consists of a separate switch and separate NICs (network interface cards), and is a recommended option. This segregation prevents system administration and the monitoring of system access from being disrupted by traffic generated by guests.

Consider creating other private networks for communication between internal components of OpenStack, such as the message queue and ...