[ovs-dev] [PATCH 3/3] xenserver: Gracefully refresh network UUIDs on pool join or leave.

[Justin Pettit]

On Apr 23, 2010, at 11:38 AM, Keith Amidon wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:25:32 -0700, Ben Pfaff <blp at nicira.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 10:15:17AM -0700, Justin Pettit wrote:
>>> The solution is obviously very XenServer-specific.  As we become more
>>> tightly integrated with other hypervisors, we should look to
>>> generalize some of the hypervisor-specific stuff we're doing in the
>>> binaries.
>> 
>> Yes.  (The problem is very XenServer-specific too.)
>> 
>> To me the "obvious" solution here was to add a daemon or a frequently
>> running cron job that does the same thing, or to integrate daemon
>> functionality into the refresh-network-uuids script itself.  I still
>> like that approach and I'm completely willing to redo it that way.  I
>> had the impression, however, that we didn't want to create any more
>> daemons.
> 
> Just a general comment: to the extent that others are integrating Open
> vSwitch with their hypervisors (e.g. Telivo) we don't have to provide a
> generic solution for this but just documentation about what needs to be
> set (through ovs-vsctl or whatever) in order for the application they
> are using (e.g. NVP) to work.  It then becomes their responsibility to
> create the solution.

Yes.  However, my point was that it would be ideal to avoid adding platform-specific hacks in ovs-vswitchd if they're not required.  In this particular instance, we're just putting this in to avoid running another daemon; there is no interaction between the existing code in ovs-vswitchd and this new code.

> We have to do this for XenServer because we're the ones actually doing
> the hypervisor integration work.  If we choose to do this for another
> platform than we'll do it there and it may make sense to generalize the
> solution with hypervisor specific modifications but I'd suggest we wait
> to do that work until we've identified the next hypervisor platform
> we're going to do the integration work on.


Yes, I believe that is what I said in my original message.  

While we are on the hook for doing the XenServer integration, I don't think it makes sense to bundle this functionality into ovs-vswitchd itself.  Unless there's a strong feeling against running another daemon, Ben said he would work on a little Python daemon that handles this in the background.  If there is a strong feeling against it, I'd be curious as to the reasons.

--Justin