ESCAPEv2: Extensible Service ChAin Prototyping Environment using Mininet, Click, NETCONF and POX

Introduction

On the one hand, ESCAPE (Extensible Service ChAin Prototyping Environment) is a general prototyping framework which supports the development of several parts of the service chaining architecture including VNF implementation, traffic steering, virtual network embedding, etc. On the other hand, ESCAPE is a proof of concept prototype implementing a novel SFC (Service Function Chaining) architecture proposed by EU FP7 UNIFY project: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/189119_en.html. It is a realization of the UNIFY service programming and orchestration framework which enables the joint programming and virtualization of cloud and networking resources.

The main scope of ESCAPE as a multi-domain orchestrator (MdO) is to discover, detect and manage infrastructure domains using different technologies.

ESCAPE receives the specific service requests on its REST-like API, orchestrate the requested Service Function Chains on the full resource view (which is constructed automatically based on the information gathered from lower level domains) making use of a dedicated resource mapping algorithm and propagate the calculated service parts to the corresponding Domain Orchestrators (DO).

In addition, ESCAPE can be used in the role of a local Domain Orchestrator when an extended version of Mininet network emulation platform is used as an infrastructure which is able to run Network Functions and realize dataplane connectivity.

Full documentation

For detailed information see the online documentation: https://sb.tmit.bme.hu/escape/

Installation

Setup scripts

The install_dep.sh script is responsible for managing the dependencies. It sets the required sym-links, updates the related submodules and installs only the necessary packages regarding the given install parameters.

$ ./install-dep.sh -h
Detected platform is Ubuntu, version: 16.04!
User project config: N/A
Usage: ./install-dep.sh [-c] [-d] [-g] [-h] [-i] [-p project]
Install script for ESCAPEv2

options:
	-c:   (default) install (C)ore dependencies for Global Orchestration
	-d:   install additional dependencies for (D)evelopment and test tools
	-g:   install dependencies for our rudimentary (G)UI (deprecated)
	-h:   print this (H)elp message
	-i:   install components of (I)nfrastructure Layer
		for Local Orchestration (deprecated)
	-p:   explicitly setup project name based on: .gitmodules.<name>
		instead of automatic detection

For automatically setting up the submodules and its submodules recursively, the project-setup.sh script has been added to the project.

$ ./project-setup.sh -h
Setup submodules according to given project for ESCAPEe.
If project name is not given the script tries to detect it
from the git's local configurations.

Usage: ./project-setup.sh [-h] [-p project]
Parameters:
	 -h, --help      show this help message and exit
	 -p, --project   setup project name based on: .gitmodules.<name>

Example: ./project-setup.sh -p 5gex

If you don't want to use the complex install script or the included project setup script either then just create a sym-link to the relevant gitmodules file with the name .gitmodules and update the submodule manually.

$ ln -vfs .gitmodules.<PROJECT> .gitmodules
$ git submodules update --init

Because the core ESCAPE relies on POX and written in Python there is no need for explicit compiling or installation. The only requirement need to be pre-installed is a Python interpreter.

The recommended Python version, in which the development and mostly the testing are performed, is the standard CPython 2.7.14.

The best choice of platform on wich ESCAPE is recommended to install and the install-dep.sh is tested is Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS.

The preferred way:

1. Download one of pre-build Ubuntu LTS VM image, create one in your preferred VM manager (or just use the default Docker image of Ubuntu).

2. Create the .ssh folder in the home directory and copy your private RSA key into the VM with the name id_rsa. If you use a VM image then the following commands can be used in the VM to copy your RSA key from your host:

   $ cd
   $ mkdir .ssh
   $ scp <your_user>@<host_ip>:~/.ssh/<your_ssh_key> ~/.ssh/id_rsa
   $ sudo chmod 700 .ssh && sudo chmod 600 .ssh/id_rsa

3. Clone the shared escape repository (the default folder name will be: escape).

   $ git clone <git repo URL> escape

4. Install the necessary dependencies with the install_dep.sh script (system and Python packages, optionally the OpenYuma with VNFStarter module, etc.):

   $ cd escape
   $ ./install_dep.sh

   In a high level the script above takes care of the following things:

   • Setup sym-links and submodules for given project name
   • Install the necessary system and Python packages

   In case of installed Infrastructure layer:

   • Compile and install the OpenYuma tools with our VNF_starter module
   • Compile and install Click modular router and The Click GUI.
   • Install neo4j graph database for NFIB

5. Run ESCAPE with one of the commands listed in a later section. To see the available arguments of the top stating script check the help menu:

   $ ./escape.py --help

   To verify ESCAPE in MdO role a dry-run can be performed without any command line flag. If ESCAPE is up and running, the following line will be logged to the console:

      > [core                   ] ESCAPEv2 is up.

   This final log entry means that each component was installed and configured successfully.

   To verify ESCAPE in DO role with the embedding engine and all of it's components, the following command can be run in order to test the reachability between the initiated service access points (SAP) represented by the(xterm) windows with the ping command:

   $ ./escape.py -df -s examples/escape-mn-req.nffg
   
   # on SAP1 xterm
   $ ping sap2
   # on SAP2 xterm
   $ ping sap1

   This command starts the full stack ESCAPE with the default topology (examples/escape-mn-topo.nffg) and initiate a service request consists of a HeaderCompressor and a HeaderDecompressor VNF for one direction and a simple Forwarder VNF for the backward direction between SAP1 and SAP2. The two initiated SAP should reach each other after the service request has been processed.

ESCAPE as a Docker container

ESCAPE can be run in a Docker container. To create the basic image, issue the following command in the project root:

$ sudo docker build --rm --no-cache -t mdo/ro .

This command creates a minimal image based on the official Python image with the name: mdo/ro, installs the required Python dependencies listed in requirement.txt and sets the entry point.

To create and start a persistent container based on the mdo/ro image, use the following commands:

$ sudo docker create --name escape -p 8008:8008 -p 8888:8888 -p 9000:9000 -it mdo/ro
$ sudo docker start -i escape

To create a one-time container, use the following command:

$ sudo docker run --rm -p 8008:8008 -p 8888:8888 p 9000:9000 -ti mdo/ro

Other helper scripts for the dockerization can be found under the docker folder.

Tests

ESCAPE has several testcases formed as Unit tests. These tests can be found under the test folder.

Dependent packages for the test can be installed with the install_requirements.sh script. To run the test see the main test runner script:

$ ./run_tests.py -h
usage: run_tests.py [-h] [-f] [-o] [-t t] [-s] [-v]
                    [testcases [testcases ...]]

ESCAPE Test runner

positional arguments:
  testcases          list test case names you want to run. Example:
                     ./run_tests.py case05 case03 --show-output

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  -f, --failfast     stop on first failure
  -o, --show-output  show ESCAPE output (can use multiple times for more
                     verbose logging)
  -t t, --timeout t  define explicit timeout in sec (default: 60s)
  -s, --standalone   run standalone mode: no timeout, no quitting
  -v, --verbose      run testframework in verbose mode and show output

To run the testcases in a Docker container, use the dockerized-test.sh script:

Run testcases in a docker container.

Usage: ./dockerized-test.sh [-b] | ...
Parameters:
	 -b, --build   force to rebuild the Docker image
	 -c, --clean   remove the test image: escape-test
	 -d, --debug   run an interactive container based on escape-test
	 -h, --help    show this help message and exit
	 ...           runner parameters, see run_tests.py -h

Example: ./dockerized-test.sh -b | ./dockerized-test.sh case15 -o

Documentation

The documentation can be generated from source code with generate-docs.sh script or directly with the Makefile under escape/doc directory. The generated doc can be found in escape/doc/build/.

$ ./escape/doc/generate-doc.sh

Requirements:

• sphinx (sudo -H pip install sphinx)
• texlive-latex-extra (sudo apt install -y texlive-latex-extra)

Online version: https://sb.tmit.bme.hu/escape/

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0; see LICENSE file.

Copyright (C) 2017 by
János Czentye <[email protected]>
Balázs Németh <[email protected]>
Balázs Sonkoly <[email protected]>