OpenStack Summit May 2014 Atlanta

To provide public connectivity to virtual machines, you can install the Neutron L3 Agent which aims to connect your VM to external networks (Internet for example) through virtual routers and also connect VM between internal private networks.


Also, your VMs could be reachable from outside by using floating IP, thanks to NAT process to reach the VM. The L3 Agent was multi-node ready from Grizzly release, but if you lost an L3 agent node, you also lost virtual routers and then the external connectivity for virtual machines.
Until Icehouse, there was not proper way to bring L3 connectivity highly available without losing the agent scalability.


This talk will provide a view of the work which has been made on the L3 agent and the virtual routers during the last release regarding to the high availability. The High Availability of the L3 agent will ensure there will be no downtime between external and internal networks and between internal networks connectivity, even with the lost of one or more l3 nodes.
We will also see the new features that could be brought in the next release, which will improve routing scalability, especially for the east-west traffic.