OpenStack Summit May 2015 Vancouver

IPv6 is a fundamental IP network layer model developed for end-to-end services and network transparency. Besides providing ways of doing a lot more with just a network layer protocol, it allows expanding network reach to billions of endpoints without the need for complex NAT technologies. It brings operational simplicity to public cloud providers by not having to worry about overlapping network addresses and enables Internet connectivity to all tenant instances without the need for costly acquisition of public IPv4 address blocks for NAT. With OpenStack committing increasing support of IPv6 with every release, the time is ripe for implementing IPv6 for tenant facing services. Only through practical implementation, we will be able to understand issues with the current code, fix those issues and contribute back to the community for a more robust future release. 

This presentation shares the lessons and learns from enabling IPv6 in Cisco’s OpenStack based Cloud Services. It will discuss the technical challenges of implementing the IPv6 reference architecture in a production environment. A wide range of technology topics relevant to the deployment will be discussed such as: SLAAC based address provisioning, IPv6 operation in a provider network model, integration of external routers providing Router Advertisements, stateless DHCPv6 with dnsmasq, client side behavior, security group enhancements and Horizon integration. Other perspectives relevant to IPv6 enablement in an OpenStack production environment will also be covered, including the needs of migration, security and high-availability that can shape the IPv6 deployment models and feature requirements.

Furthermore, the presentation will share our experience of aligning the IPv6 enablement project with DevOps model. We will touch upon the development of IPv6 features, the process of testing the IPv6 features in standalone and dual-stack scenarios, the coordination between software Q/A and operation teams in order to enable effective monitoring and support of the IPv6 enabled OpenStack system.

Finally, we will discuss the vision of making OpenStack natively working with IPv6 with no dependencies on IPv4. This presentation also includes a short demo.