Video: Dynamic Routing in Data Centers with OpenStack and BGP

The latest developments and the most up-to-date know-how for the use of OpenStack are the focus of the German OpenStack Days (DOST). aiticon CEO Matthias Herlitzius was there, too, with a presentation.

Modern data centers use BGP not only on edge routers, but – instead of a conventional IGP – also for internal routing (see RFC 7938). Layer 2 networks often terminate at the TOR switch in this scenario. Depending on the use case, it may even be possible to dynamically route directly to the host.

In this talk, we show how OpenStack can be integrated into such an infrastructure. We connect Neutron to other BGP speakers using the BGP Dynamic Routing Agent and show the advantages and disadvantages of this solution. Based on this, we present a solution approach to route floating IPs directly to the compute node using BGP and DVR - even if the individual compute nodes of the cluster are located in different Layer 3 networks. By overcoming the Layer 2 boundary, we achieve maximum flexibility and scalability of our infrastructure.

Watch the presentation here (in German):