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OpenStack-Ansible networking on CentOS 7 with systemd-networkd

··568 words·3 mins·
Ansible Linux Networking Openstack Systemd Vlan
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Although OpenStack-Ansible doesn’t fully support CentOS 7 yet, the support is almost ready. I have a four node Ocata cloud deployed on CentOS 7, but I decided to change things around a bit and use systemd-networkd instead of NetworkManager or the old rc scripts.

This post will explain how to configure the network for an OpenStack-Ansible cloud on CentOS 7 with systemd-networkd.

Each one of my OpenStack hosts has four network interfaces and each one has a specific task:

  • enp2s0 – regular network interface, carries inter-host LAN traffic
  • enp3s0 – carries br-mgmt bridge for LXC container communication
  • enp4s0 – carries br-vlan bridge for VM public network connectivity
  • enp5s0 – carries br-vxlan bridge for VM private network connectivity

Adjusting services #

First off, we need to get systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved ready to take over networking:

systemctl disable network
systemctl disable NetworkManager
systemctl enable systemd-networkd
systemctl enable systemd-resolved
systemctl start systemd-resolved
rm -f /etc/resolv.conf
ln -s /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf

LAN interface #

My enp2s0 network interface carries traffic between hosts and handles regular internal LAN traffic.

/etc/systemd/network/enp2s0.network

[Match]
Name=enp2s0

[Network]
Address=192.168.250.21/24
Gateway=192.168.250.1
DNS=192.168.250.1
DNS=8.8.8.8
DNS=8.8.4.4
IPForward=yes

This one is quite simple, but the rest get a little more complicated.

Management bridge #

The management bridge (br-mgmt) carries traffic between LXC containers. We start by creating the bridge device itself:

/etc/systemd/network/br-mgmt.netdev

[NetDev]
Name=br-mgmt
Kind=bridge

Now we configure the network on the bridge (I use OpenStack-Ansible’s defaults here):

/etc/systemd/network/br-mgmt.network

[Match]
Name=br-mgmt

[Network]
Address=172.29.236.21/22

I run the management network on VLAN 10, so I need a network device and network configuration for the VLAN as well. This step adds the br-mgmt bridge to the VLAN 10 interface:

/etc/systemd/network/vlan10.netdev

[NetDev]
Name=vlan10
Kind=vlan

[VLAN]
Id=10

/etc/systemd/network/vlan10.network

[Match]
Name=vlan10

[Network]
Bridge=br-mgmt

Finally, we add the VLAN 10 interface to enp3s0 to tie it all together:

/etc/systemd/network/enp3s0.network

[Match]
Name=enp3s0

[Network]
VLAN=vlan10

Public instance connectivity #

My router offers up a few different VLANs for OpenStack instances to use for their public networks. We start by creating a br-vlan network device and its configuration:

/etc/systemd/network/br-vlan.netdev

[NetDev]
Name=br-vlan
Kind=bridge

/etc/systemd/network/br-vlan.network

[Match]
Name=br-vlan

[Network]
DHCP=no

We can add this bridge onto the enp4s0 physical interface:

/etc/systemd/network/enp4s0.network

[Match]
Name=enp4s0

[Network]
Bridge=br-vlan

VXLAN private instance connectivity #

This step is similar to the previous one. We start by defining our br-vxlan bridge:

/etc/systemd/network/br-vxlan.netdev

[NetDev]
Name=br-vxlan
Kind=bridge

/etc/systemd/network/br-vxlan.network

[Match]
Name=br-vxlan

[Network]
Address=172.29.240.21/22

My VXLAN traffic runs over VLAN 11, so we need to define that VLAN interface:

/etc/systemd/network/vlan11.netdev

[NetDev]
Name=vlan11
Kind=vlan

[VLAN]
Id=11

/etc/systemd/network/vlan11.network

[Match]
Name=vlan11

[Network]
Bridge=br-vxlan

We can hook this VLAN interface into the enp5s0 interface now:

/etc/systemd/network/enp5s0.network

[Match]
Name=enp5s0

[Network]
VLAN=vlan11

Checking our work #

The cleanest way to apply all of these configurations is to reboot. The Adjusting services step from the beginning of this post will ensure that systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved come up after a reboot.

Run networkctl to get a current status of your network interfaces:

# networkctl
IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP
  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged
  2 enp2s0           ether              routable    configured
  3 enp3s0           ether              degraded    configured
  4 enp4s0           ether              degraded    configured
  5 enp5s0           ether              degraded    configured
  6 lxcbr0           ether              routable    unmanaged
  7 br-vxlan         ether              routable    configured
  8 br-vlan          ether              degraded    configured
  9 br-mgmt          ether              routable    configured
 10 vlan11           ether              degraded    configured
 11 vlan10           ether              degraded    configured

You should have configured in the SETUP column for all of the interfaces you created. Some interfaces will show as degraded because they are missing an IP address (which is intentional for most of these interfaces).

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