[Ovirt-devel] Managed node NIC management

[Darryl Pierce]

During a discussion today, we discussed managing NIC configuration  
for managed nodes from within the server suite.

My understanding of how that would is:

1. managed node runs the awake script, notifying the server suite  
that it is awake.
2. managed node identifies all of its hardware
3. server suite generates a network configuration file based on what  
is in the nics table for this managed node
4. managed node pulls down this configuration
5. managed node configures its network interfaces based on the  
configuration

The main point brought up is that there is no guarantee that eth0 on  
one boot will be eth0 on the next boot. If a card should get moved,  
or a kernel upgrade should change the process order, then the  
interface name can change. As such, we have a challenge of deciding  
how to response when the interface name for a card changes between  
boots.

The responses that come to mind for me are:

1. server suite ignores the interface name in the db and uses what is  
sent up during identification; it sends an alert to the admin that  
the network has changed
2. server suite returns an error condition to the managed node,  
alerts the admin and shuts the managed node down
3. server suite returns no configuration file and alerts the admin  
that the managed node's network was not configured

#2 is pretty heavy handed. #1 seems a reasonable response on first  
blush, since it's assumed that the only thing different is the  
interface's name.

So, I'd like some input from everybody on what we ought to do. One  
suggestion that came up during our discussion was passing in some  
network configuration parameters with the boot parameters. I'll be  
honest, I'm not sure how we would go about that. But, if someone can  
help explain it to me, I'd be glad to explore that path.

Thoughts?

-- 
Darryl L. Pierce, Sr. Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. - http://www.redhat.com/
oVirt - Virtual Machine Management - http://www.ovirt.org/
"What do you care what other people think, Mr. Feynman?"



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