2. SPP Controller¶
SPP is controlled from python based management framework. It consists of front-end CLI and back-end server process. SPP’s front-end CLI provides a patch panel like interface for users. This CLI process parses user input and sends request to the back-end via REST APIs. It means that the back-end server process accepts requests from other than CLI. It enables developers to implement control interface such as GUI, or plugin for other framework. networking-spp is a Neutron ML2 plugin for using SPP with OpenStack. By using networking-spp and doing some of extra tunings for optimization, you can deploy high-performance NFV services on OpenStack [1].
2.1. spp-ctl¶
spp-ctl is designed for managing SPP from several controllers
via REST-like APIs for users or other applications.
It is implemented to be simple and it is stateless.
Basically, it only converts a request into a command of SPP process and
forward it to the process without any of syntax or lexical checking.
There are several usecases where SPP is managed from other process without user inputs. For example, you need a intermediate process if you think of using SPP from a framework, such as OpenStack. networking-spp is a Neutron ML2 plugin for SPP and spp-agent works as a SPP controller.
As shown in Fig. 2.1,
spp-ctl behaves as a TCP server for SPP primary and secondary processes,
and REST API server for client applications.
It should be launched in advance to setup connections with other processes.
spp-ctl uses three TCP ports for primary, secondaries and clients.
The default port numbers are 5555, 6666 and 7777.
Fig. 2.1 Spp-ctl as a REST API server
spp-ctl accepts multiple requests at the same time and serializes them
by using
bottle
which is simple and well known as a web framework and
eventlet
for parallel processing.
2.2. SPP CLI¶
SPP CLI is a user interface for managing SPP and implemented as a client of
spp-ctl. It provides several kinds of command for inspecting SPP
processes, changing path configuration or showing statistics of packets.
However, you do not need to use SPP CLI if you use netowrking-spp or
other client applications of spp-ctl. SPP CLI is one of them.
From SPP CLI, user is able to configure paths as similar as
patch panel like manner by sending commands to each of SPP secondary processes.
patch phy:0 ring:0 is to connect two ports, phy:0 and ring:0.
As described in Getting Started guide,
SPP CLI is able to communicate several spp-ctl to support multiple nodes
configuration.