v0.8-alpha

Release Summary

This release focuses on microservice implementation for Alcor control plane, E2E integration with OpenStack, and performance tuning and comparison with Neutron. Some highlight of this release:

• Deliver 8 new microservices along with customer-facing APIs
• Enable gRPC fast path to achieve sub-second port provisioning latency for latency-sensitive applications
• Complete E2E integration with OpenStack Nova, KeyStone, Horizon UI and CLI
• Compare performance with Neutron and demonstrate at least 10x performance gain on latency, throughput and concurrency
• Migration plan from Neutron to Alcor is in place

Features Added

New MicroService Design & Development

• Subnet Manager (PR #154, #174, #334)
• Port Manager (PR #180, #197, #208, #248, #271)
• Private IP Manager (PR #164, #272)
• Virtual Mac Manager (PR #147, #183, #188, #206)
• Security Group Manager (PR #208)
• Elastic IP Manager (PR #215, #243, #298, #347)
• Data Plane Manager (PR #234, #240, #254, #355)
• Node Metadata Manager (PR #189, #249, #326, #340)

Release of New APIs

• Subnet CURD (API spec)
• Port CURD and bulk operation (API spec)
• Security group and security group rule CURD (API spec)
• Port & security group binding/unbinding (API spec)
• Segment & segment range CURD (PR #181, API spec)
• Network Ip availability and usage stats (PR #353, API spec)
• Elastic IP management (PR #243, API spec)
• Port & EIP association/disassociation (PR #298, API spec)

Alcor Common Libraries

• Create common modules including AlcorLib, AlcorWeb, and AlcorSchema (PR #195, #220)
• Improve Ignite database/cache usage and support SQL-alike query (PR #208)
• Add common async executor to AlcorLib (PR #180)
• Add common microservice rest clients to AlcorWeb (PR #180)
• Support service rollback when create/update operation fail (PR #180)
• Support multi-param query (PR #252, #326, #356)
• Cache layer supports setting of expire time (PR #219, #342)

Alcor Control Agent Design & Development

• High-level design of OVS and ACA integration (ACA PR 94)
• L2 port programming with OVS (ACA PR 105)
• Local Vlan manager implementation (ACA PR 109)
• Tracking and processing of OVS packet-in and packet-out (ACA PR 112)
• Design of a two-layer distributed DHCP component (ACA PR 103)
• Design and implementation of L3 distributed routing for inter-subnet VM to VM communication (PR #339, ACA PR 119)

Performance tuning and E2E performance test

• Optimize mac allocation algorithm (#292, #317)
• Port Manager 2.0 (PR #301)
• VPC code refactor for latency improvement (PR #357)
• Alcor performance annotation (PR #276)
• Add time cost estimation for all microservices (PR #350)
• Release preliminary performance comparison results

Compatibility and Integration with OpenStack

• Integration with Nova (PR #202, #204)
• Integration with Horizon UI (PR #322)
• Compatible with OpenStack CLI
• Migration plan for existing Neutron clients (PR #205)

Security

• Support Authentication with OpenStack Keystone (PR #219, #333)
• Alcor RBAC support (PR #352)

Fundamental

• Add Code coverage report for Alcor controller repository (PR #241, #247)
• UT coverage improvement for existing microservices (PR #174)
• Support Swagger API document and Swagger UI (PR #184, #187, #313)
• Enable Ignite for all microservices (#337)
• Add Ignite service mock in UTs (PR #201)
• Standardize service pom and remove unused dependencies (PR #198)
• Upgrade Alcor Project to Use OpenJDK 11 LTS (#266)
• Design Documentation Improvement with Antora (PR #210)
• Logging enhancement (PR #327, #329)

Deployment, Monitoring and CI/CD

• Deploy controller with Kubernetes (PR #222, #290, #291, #325)
• Enable CI/CD workflow for Alcor controller repository (PR #173, #186)
• Alcor Onebot setup for development and deployment (#306)
• Alcor Monitoring with NetData

Stabilization and Bug fix

• Fix 30+ bugs (PR #173, #196, #206, #213, #235, #269, #253, #293, #294, #300, #307, #308, #310, #311, #316, #320, #321, #322, #331, #341, #342, #348, #351, #357, #367, #368)