Things I learnt with the Zorp and openSUSE Team

Greetings everyone, this is Peter from Hungary. In the last few months I have spent a lot of time and effort to give something to the open source community in the framework of GSoC. The aim of my project was to implement a Load Balancer as a Service (LBaaS) Zorp (//www.balabit.com/network-security/zorp) driver for OpenStack (//www.openstack.org/) in openSUSE environment.

   Milestones of the project

The project was divided into three parts that I would like to discuss in detail.

   Packaging

The first obstacle was compiling and packaging. To be honest, it was all new to me, since I have never created packages before, and I did not even know how it all works. At this point I would like to write a big thank you to my mentors, who guided me, and advised me to use Open Build Service (OBS https://build.opensuse.org/). This thing is awesome, with some practise I have been able to build Zorp to a lot of different versions of different distributions (OpenSuse, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu).

   Load balancing strategies to Zorp

The second part was the missing load balancing strategies of Zorp. Zorp could be used as a load balancer, but in order to integrate it into OpenStack, some missing strategies had to be implemented, for example Least Connections or Source IP. At this point I was really impressed, Zorp is truly the software equivalent of a Swiss Army knife or a Death Star. It was such a wonderful experience that with a good configuration, it could do almost everything. I have tried Test Driven Development (TDD //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development) for this part of the work. I cannot say that it was completely new to me, but I have never used it before in real-life development circumstances (not in Code Retreat for example). It seems to be a working method.

I have got the tip from my mentors to try Travis, as it might be a useful tool to compile and run tests, and then if everything went fine, send the required files to OBS. The idea was great, so I followed their lead. The result is that it is now integrated with GitHub, and with every change it now automatically performs the abovementioned tasks.

   Neutron driver

The third part, which I especially found the most difficult, was to write the driver for the Neutron component of OpenStack. OpenStack is a really complex system, and understanding it requires a lot of time, but at last, I have managed to integrate Zorp into the system. It can be selected from the dashboard, set up with a variety of different pools, and used as an LBaaS.

    How to use it

I will now describe how to use it. First, set up a machine with my Neutron repository (https://github.com/VPetyaa/neutron) with OpenStack. To make it easier, DevStack is a good choice, but if you prefer to do it manually, there are several guides that lead you through the required steps. Install a Zorp from OBS (https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/security:Zorp:LBaaS), and enable the driver in Neutron. After this step, you are ready to use your Dashboard, or to use it in any other way you like.

I have written a very detailed setup guide for those who are interested. I hope it will leave no open questions: https://github.com/VPetyaa/neutron/blob/master/neutron/services/loadbalancer/drivers/zorp/README

Also there are two virtual machines for you to try, the first one is an OpenSuse with Zorp installed, and configured to use as a load balancer. The other is a complete, pre-configured OpenStack, with Zorp, because even openSUSE Factory does not contain the latest OpenStack. This machine uses Ubuntu 14.04. Feel free to try them. Links:https://db.tt/J3bM1qWh

   Thank you

To sum this summer, it was really fun, and it provided a very rich learning experience. I cannot express how thankful I am for being able to participate in such a great project. So first of all I would like to thank openSUSE for giving me the opportunity. Also, a big thanks goes to my mentors, who spent a lot of time with me guiding me (to avoid the dark side of the Force :)). Balint Kovacs, Peter Czanik, Szilard Pfeiffer thank you so much, without your help this project could have never been done.

I hope we will work together next summer as well! V_Petya