StratusLab network setup

The StratusLab distribution uses OpenNebula to manage the virtual machines. This cloud system allows users to define their own network for their machines.

This powerful feature can be hard to understand and to configure for normal users, that's why StratusLab has made the choice to create by default two networks available to all users.

A public network (named public), which can be reach from the outside and a private network (named private), reachable only inside the cloud installation infrastructure.

These two networks are automatically created at installation by the stratus-install tool. If you install your cloud by hand, you have to create it, otherwise tools like stratus-run-instance won't work.

Network configuration is done with the stratus-config. Parameters for the network are:

• network_addr: The network address of your infrastructure. This is independent of the network type, this allows, for example, the private network to reach machines outside the infrastructure.
• network_mask: Netmask of your infrastructure (like 16 for 255.255.0.0)
• default_gateway: The default gateway of your infrastructure
• one_public_network: Public network address
• one_public_network_addr: If you want to create a fixed network, define available IPs separate by space. Leave this parameter blank to create a ranged network
• one_public_network_size: Number of available IP in the public network (can be integer, B or C). If one_public_network_addr his define this parameters is not used.
• Same parameters are available for the private network (one_private_network, one_private_network_size, one_private_network_addr)

To allow virtual machines to communicate with physical machines from the private network interface, routes have to be added (on the gateway or the host from which you want to communicate with the VMs).

On linux systems, routes can be added with the route command:

  route add -net <network_address>/<network_mask> dev <network_interface>

By default a route to the private network is added on the frontend machine by the stratus-install command.

Routes on the virtual machines are automatically set by the contextualization script.