vppagent

README

VPP Agent

Please note that the content of this repository is currently WORK IN PROGRESS!

The VPP Agent is a Go implementation of a control/management plane for VPP based cloud-native Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). The VPP Agent is built on top of CN Infra, a framework for developing cloud-native VNFs (CNFs).

The VPP Agent can be used as-is as a management/control agent for VNFs based on off-the-shelf VPP (e.g. a VPP-based vswitch), or as a framework for developing management agents for VPP-based CNFs. An example of a custom VPP-based CNF is the Contiv-VPP vswitch.

Releases

Release	Release Date	Info
		latest release
		last release/pre-release

Have a look at the release notes for a complete list of changes.

Branches

Branch	Last Commit	Info
		has moved to v2, introducing several breaking changes ⚠
		will be used for all the future development

Note: The branch pantheon-dev has been deprecated (v1).

Images

Image	Image Size/Layers	Info
		minimal image for production
		image prepared for developers

The image tag latest is built from master branch and dev tag is built from dev branch.

Quickstart

For a quick start with the VPP Agent, you can use the pre-built Docker images on DockerHub that contain the VPP Agent and VPP: ligato/vpp-agent (or for ARM64: ligato/vpp-agent-arm64).

1. Start ETCD (for image versions lower than 2.0, the Kafka is required as well) on your host (e.g. in Docker as described here). Note: for ARM64 see the information for kafka and for etcd.

2. Run VPP + VPP Agent in a Docker container:

docker pull ligato/vpp-agent
docker run -it --rm --name vpp --privileged ligato/vpp-agent

1. Manage VPP agent using agentctl:

docker exec -it vpp agentctl -h

1. Check the configuration (using agentctl or directly using VPP console):

docker exec -it vpp agentctl -e 172.17.0.1:2379 show
docker exec -it vpp vppctl -s localhost:5002

Next Steps

See README of development docker image for more details.

Documentation

Detailed documentation for the VPP Agent can be found at ligato.io/vpp-agent.

Architecture

The VPP Agent is basically a set of VPP-specific plugins that use the CN-Infra framework to interact with other services/microservices in the cloud (e.g. a KV data store, messaging, log warehouse, etc.). The VPP Agent exposes VPP functionality to client apps via a higher-level model-driven API. Clients that consume this API may be either external (connecting to the VPP Agent via REST, gRPC API, Etcd or message bus transport), or local Apps and/or Extension plugins running on the same CN-Infra framework in the same Linux process.

The VNF Agent architecture is shown in the following figure:

Each (northbound) VPP API - L2, L3, ACL, ... - is implemented by a specific VNF Agent plugin, which translates northbound API calls/operations into (southbound) low level VPP Binary API calls. Northbound APIs are defined using protobufs, which allow for the same functionality to be accessible over multiple transport protocols (HTTP, gRPC, Etcd, ...). Plugins use the GoVPP library to interact with the VPP.

The following figure shows the VPP Agent in context of a cloud-native VNF, where the VNF's data plane is implemented using VPP/DPDK and its management/control planes are implemented using the VNF agent:

Plugins

The set of plugins in the VPP Agent is as follows:

• VPP plugins - core plugins providing northbound APIs to default VPP functionality:
  • ACL: - VPP Access Lists (VPP ACL plugin)
  • Interfaces - VPP network interfaces (e.g. DPDK, MEMIF, AF_Packet, VXLAN, Loopback..)
  • L2 - Bridge Domains, L2 cross-connects..
  • L3 - IP Routes, ARPs, ProxyARPs, VRFs..
  • IPSec - Security policy databases and policy associations
  • Punt - punt to host (directly or via socket), IP redirect
  • NAT - network address translation configuration, DNAT44
  • SR - segment routing
• Linux plugins (VETH) - allows optional configuration of Linux virtual ethernet interfaces
  • Interfaces - Linux network interfaces (e.g. VETH, TAP..)
  • L3 - IP Routes, ARPs
  • NS - Linux network namespaces
• GoVPPmux - plugin wrapper around GoVPP. Multiplexes plugins' access to VPP on a single connection.
• RESTAPI - provides API to retrieve actual state
• KVScheduler - synchronizes the desired state described by northbound components with the actual state of the southbound.

Tools

The VPP agent repository also contains tools for building and troubleshooting of VNFs based on the VPP Agent:

• agentctl - a CLI tool that shows the state of a set of VPP agents can configure the agents
• vpp-agent-ctl (DEPRECATED) - a utility for testing VNF Agent configuration. It contains a set of pre-defined configurations that can be sent to the VPP Agent either interactively or in a script.
• docker - container-based development environment for the VPP agent and for app/extension plugins.

Contributing

If you are interested in contributing, please see the contribution guidelines.

Documentation

Overview

Package vppagent is the parent for vpp-specific packages used to build VPP Agent, a control/management plane for VPP-based cloud-native VNFs. VPP Agent is built on the cn-infra framework.