Example Service Tutorial

This tutorial uses ExampleService to illustrate how to write and on-board a service in CORD. ExampleService is a multi-tenant service that instantiates a VM instance on behalf of each tenant, and runs an Apache web server in that VM. This web server is then configured to serve a tenant-specified message (a string), where the tenant is able to set this message using CORD's control interface. From a service modeling perspective, ExampleService extends the base Service model with two fields:

• service_message: A string that contains a message to display for the service as a whole (i.e., to all tenants of the service).
• tenant_message: A string that is displayed for a specific Tenant.

These two fields are a simple illustration of a common pattern. A service model typically includes fields used to configure the service as a whole (service_message in this example) and fields used to control individual instances of the the service (tenant_message in this example). It would be common for the operator to set configuration-related fields when the service first starts up, and then set/adjust control-related fields on behalf of individual tenants as the service runs.

Tenant and ServiceInstance are two closely related terms. "Tenant" refers to the user or the consumer of a service. Often we partition a service into logical partitions, each for use by a tenant, thus making it a multi-tenant service. Each one of these tenant-specific partitions is referred to as a ServiceInstance.

Summary

The result of preparing ExampleService for on-boarding is the following set of files, all located in the xos directory of the exampleservice repository. When checked out, these files live in the CORD_ROOT/orchestration/xos_services/exampleservice directory on your local development machine.

Earlier releases (3.0 and before) required additional files (mostly Python code) to on-board a service, including a REST API, a TOSCA API, and an Admin GUI. These components are now auto-generated from the models rather than coded by hand, although it is still possible to extend the GUI.

In addition to implementing these service-specific files, the final step to on-boarding a service requires you to modify an existing (or write a new) service profile. This tutorial uses the existing R-CORD profile for illustrative purposes. These profile definitions currently live in the https://github.com/opencord/rcord repository. Additional related playbooks reside in the https://github.com/opencord/platform-install/ for historical reasons.

Development Environment

For this tutorial we recommend using a Virtual Pod (CiaB) as your development environment. By default CiaB brings up OpenStack, ONOS, and XOS running the R-CORD collection of services. This tutorial demonstrates how to add a new customer-facing service to R-CORD.

A Virtual Pod includes a build machine, a head node, switches, and a compute node all running as VMs on a single host. Before proceeding you should familiarize yourself with the CiaB environment and the POD Development Loop.

Create the synchronizer directory

The synchronizer directory holds the model declarations and the synchronizer for the service. Usually this directory is xos/synchronizer. This tutorial will first walk through creating the models, and then discuss creating the synchronizer itself.

Make a new root directory for your service, and within that directory, create an xos subdirectory. The xos subdirectory will hold all xos-related files for your service.

Within the xos subdirectory, create a synchronizer subdirectory. The synchronizer subdirectory holds the subset of files that end up built into the synchronizer container image.

Define a Model

Your models live in a file named exampleservice.xproto in your service's xos/synchronizer/models directory. This file encodes the models in the service in a format called xproto which is a combination of Google Protocol Buffers and some XOS-specific annotations to facilitate the generation of service components, such as the GRPC and REST APIs, security policies, and database models among other things. It consists of two parts:

• The XPROTO Header, which contains options that are global to the rest of the file.

• The Service model, which manages the service as a whole.

• The ServiceInstance model, which manages tenant-specific (per-service-instance) state.

XPROTO Header

Some options are typically specified at the top of your xproto file:

option name = "exampleservice";
option app_label = "exampleservice";

name specifies a name for your service. This is used as a default in several places, for example it will be used for app_label if you don't specifically choose an app_label. Normally it suffices to set this the name of your service, lower case, with no spaces.

app_label configures the internal xos database application that is attached to these models. As with name, it suffices to set this the name of your service, lower case, with no spaces.

Service Model (Service-wide state)

A Service model extends (inherits from) the XOS base Service model. At its head is a set of option declarations such as verbose_name, which specifies a human-readable name for the service model. Then follows a set of field definitions.

message ExampleService (Service){
    option verbose_name = "Example Service";
    required string service_message = 1 [help_text = "Service Message to Display", max_length = 254, null = False, db_index = False, blank = False];
}

ServiceInstance Model (per-Tenant state)

Your ServiceInstance model will extend the core TenantWithContainer class, which is a Tenant that creates a VM instance:

message ExampleServiceInstance (TenantWithContainer){
     option verbose_name = "Example Service Instance";
     required string tenant_message = 1 [help_text = "Tenant Message to Display", max_length = 254, null = False, db_index = False, blank = False];
}

The following field specifies the message that will be displayed on a per-Tenant basis:

tenant_message = models.CharField(max_length=254, help_text="Tenant Message to Display")

Think of this as a tenant-specific (per service instance) parameter.

Define a Synchronizer

The second step is to define a synchronizer for the service. Synchronizers are processes that run continuously, checking for changes to service's model(s). When a synchronizer detects a change, it applies that change to the underlying system. For ExampleService, the ServiceInstance model is the model we will want to synchronize, and the underlying system is a compute instance. In this case, we’re using TenantWithContainer to create this instance for us.

XOS Synchronizers are typically located in the xos/synchronizer directory of your service.

Note: Earlier versions included a tool to track model dependencies, but today it is sufficient to create a file named model-deps with the contents: {}.

The Synchronizer has three parts: The synchronizer python program, model policies which enact changes on the data model, and a playbook (typically Ansible) that configures the underlying system. The following describes how to construct these.

Synchronizer Python Program

First, create a file named exampleservice-synchronizer.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Runs the standard XOS synchronizer

import importlib
import os
import sys
from xosconfig import Config

config_file = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__)) + '/exampleservice_config.yaml')
Config.init(config_file, 'synchronizer-config-schema.yaml')

synchronizer_path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(
    os.path.realpath(__file__)), "../../synchronizers/new_base")
sys.path.append(synchronizer_path)
mod = importlib.import_module("xos-synchronizer")
mod.main()

The above is boilerplate. It loads and runs the default xos-synchronizer module in it’s own Docker container. To configure this module, create a file named exampleservice_config.yaml, which specifies various configuration and logging options:

name: exampleservice
accessor:
  username: xosadmin@opencord.org
  password: "@/opt/xos/services/exampleservice/credentials/xosadmin@opencord.org"
required_models:
  - ExampleService
  - ExampleServiceInstance
  - ServiceDependency
  - ServiceMonitoringAgentInfo
dependency_graph: "/opt/xos/synchronizers/exampleservice/model-deps"
steps_dir: "/opt/xos/synchronizers/exampleservice/steps"
sys_dir: "/opt/xos/synchronizers/exampleservice/sys"
model_policies_dir: "/opt/xos/synchronizers/exampleservice/model_policies"
models_dir: "/opt/xos/synchronizers/exampleservice/models"

Make sure the name in your synchronizer config file is that same as the app_label in your xproto file. Otherwise the models won't be dynamically loaded correctly.

NOTE: Historically, synchronizers were named “observers”, so s/observer/synchronizer/ when you come upon this term in the XOS code and documentation.

Second, create a directory within your synchronizer directory named steps. In steps, create a file named sync_exampleserviceinstance.py:

import os
import sys
from synchronizers.new_base.SyncInstanceUsingAnsible import SyncInstanceUsingAnsible
from synchronizers.new_base.modelaccessor import *
from xos.logger import Logger, logging

parentdir = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "..")
sys.path.insert(0, parentdir)

logger = Logger(level=logging.INFO)

Bring in some basic prerequisites. Also include the models created earlier, and SyncInstanceUsingAnsible which will run the Ansible playbook in the Instance VM.

class SyncExampleServiceInstance(SyncInstanceUsingAnsible):

    provides = [ExampleServiceInstance]

    observes = ExampleServiceInstance

    requested_interval = 0

    template_name = "exampleserviceinstance_playbook.yaml"

    service_key_name = "/opt/xos/synchronizers/exampleservice/exampleservice_private_key"

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(SyncExampleServiceInstance, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

    def get_exampleservice(self, o):
        if not o.owner:
            return None

        exampleservice = ExampleService.objects.filter(id=o.owner.id)

        if not exampleservice:
            return None

        return exampleservice[0]

    # Gets the attributes that are used by the Ansible template but are not
    # part of the set of default attributes.
    def get_extra_attributes(self, o):
        fields = {}
        fields['tenant_message'] = o.tenant_message
        exampleservice = self.get_exampleservice(o)
        fields['service_message'] = exampleservice.service_message
        return fields

    def delete_record(self, port):
        # Nothing needs to be done to delete an exampleservice; it goes away
        # when the instance holding the exampleservice is deleted.
        pass

Third, create a run-from-api.sh file for your synchronizer.

python exampleservice-synchronizer.py

Finally, create a Dockerfile for your synchronizer, name it Dockerfile.synchronizer and place it in the synchronizer directory with the other synchronizer files:

FROM xosproject/xos-synchronizer-base:candidate

COPY . /opt/xos/synchronizers/exampleservice

ENTRYPOINT []

WORKDIR "/opt/xos/synchronizers/exampleservice"

# Label image
ARG org_label_schema_schema_version=1.0
ARG org_label_schema_name=exampleservice-synchronizer
ARG org_label_schema_version=unknown
ARG org_label_schema_vcs_url=unknown
ARG org_label_schema_vcs_ref=unknown
ARG org_label_schema_build_date=unknown
ARG org_opencord_vcs_commit_date=unknown
ARG org_opencord_component_chameleon_version=unknown
ARG org_opencord_component_chameleon_vcs_url=unknown
ARG org_opencord_component_chameleon_vcs_ref=unknown
ARG org_opencord_component_xos_version=unknown
ARG org_opencord_component_xos_vcs_url=unknown
ARG org_opencord_component_xos_vcs_ref=unknown

LABEL org.label-schema.schema-version=$org_label_schema_schema_version \
      org.label-schema.name=$org_label_schema_name \
      org.label-schema.version=$org_label_schema_version \
      org.label-schema.vcs-url=$org_label_schema_vcs_url \
      org.label-schema.vcs-ref=$org_label_schema_vcs_ref \
      org.label-schema.build-date=$org_label_schema_build_date \
      org.opencord.vcs-commit-date=$org_opencord_vcs_commit_date \
      org.opencord.component.chameleon.version=$org_opencord_component_chameleon_version \
      org.opencord.component.chameleon.vcs-url=$org_opencord_component_chameleon_vcs_url \
      org.opencord.component.chameleon.vcs-ref=$org_opencord_component_chameleon_vcs_ref \
      org.opencord.component.xos.version=$org_opencord_component_xos_version \
      org.opencord.component.xos.vcs-url=$org_opencord_component_xos_vcs_url \
      org.opencord.component.xos.vcs-ref=$org_opencord_component_xos_vcs_ref

CMD bash -c "cd /opt/xos/synchronizers/exampleservice; ./run-from-api.sh"

Synchronizer Model Policies

Model policies are used to implement change within the data model. When an ExampleServiceInstance object is saved, we want an Instance to be automatically created that will hold the ExampleServiceInstance's web server. Fortunately, there's a base class that implements this functionality for us, so minimal coding needs to be done at this time. Create the model_policies subdirectory and within that subdirectory create the file model_policy_exampleserviceinstance.py:

from synchronizers.new_base.modelaccessor import *
from synchronizers.new_base.model_policies.model_policy_tenantwithcontainer import TenantWithContainerPolicy

class ExampleServiceInstancePolicy(TenantWithContainerPolicy):
    model_name = "ExampleServiceInstance"

Synchronizer Playbooks

In the same steps directory where you created sync_exampleserviceinstance.py, create an Ansible playbook named exampleserviceinstance_playbook.yml which is the “master playbook” for this set of plays:

# exampletenant_playbook

- hosts: "{{ instance_name }}"
  connection: ssh
  user: ubuntu
  sudo: yes
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
    - tenant_message: "{{ tenant_message }}"
    - service_message: "{{ service_message }}"

This sets some basic configuration, specifies the host this Instance will run on, and the two variables that we’re passing to the playbook.

roles:
  - install_apache
  - create_index

This example uses Ansible’s Playbook Roles to organize steps, provide default variables, organize files and templates, and allow for code reuse. Roles are created by using a set directory structure.

In this case, there are two roles, one that installs Apache, and one that creates the index.html file from a Jinja2 template.

Create a directory named roles inside steps, then create two directories named for your roles: install_apache and create_index.

Within install_apache, create a directory named tasks, then within that directory, a file named main.yml. This will contain the set of plays for the install_apache role. To that file add the following:

- name: Install apache using apt
  apt:
    name=apache2
    update_cache=yes

This will use the Ansible apt module to install Apache.

Next, within create_index, create two directories, tasks and templates. In templates, create a file named index.html.j2, with the contents:

ExampleService
 Service Message: "{{ service_message }}"
 Tenant Message: "{{ tenant_message }}"

These Jinja2 Expressions will be replaced with the values of the variables set in the master playbook.

In the tasks directory, create a file named main.yml, with the contents:

- name: Write index.html file to apache document root
  template:
    src=index.html.j2
    dest=/var/www/html/index.html

This uses the Ansible template module to load and process the Jinja2 template then put it in the dest location. Note that there is no path given for the src parameter: Ansible knows to look in the templates directory for templates used within a role.

As a final step, you can check your playbooks for best practices with ansible-lint if you have it available.

Define an On-boarding Spec

The next step is to define an on-boarding recipe for the service. By convention, we use <servicename>-onboard.yaml, and place it in the xos directory of the service.

The on-boarding recipe is a TOSCA specification that lists all of the resources for your synchronizer. For example, here is the on-boarding recipe for ExampleService:

---
tosca_definitions_version: tosca_simple_yaml_1_0

description: Onboard the exampleservice

imports:
    - custom_types/xos.yaml

topology_template:
  node_templates:
    exampleservice:
      type: tosca.nodes.ServiceController
      properties:
          base_url: file:///opt/xos_services/exampleservice/xos/
          # The following will concatenate with base_url automatically, if
          # base_url is non-null.
          private_key: file:///opt/xos/key_import/exampleservice_rsa
          public_key: file:///opt/xos/key_import/exampleservice_rsa.pub

This is a legacy recipe that (when executed) on-boards ExampleService in the sense that it registers the service with the system, but it does not provision the service or create instances of the service. These latter steps can be done through CORD's GUI or REST API, or by submitting yet other TOSCA workflows to a running CORD POD (all based on end-points that are auto-generated from these on-boarded models). Additional information on how to provision and use the service is given in the last section of this tutorial.

NOTE: This file may soon be removed.

Include the Service in a Profile

The final step to on-boarding a service is to include it in one or more service profiles that are to be built and installed. Service profiles are currently defined as part of the CORD build system, so this involves editing some build-related configuration files. These files can be found in the CORD_ROOT/orchestration/profiles/rcord and CORD_ROOT/build/platform-install directories of the checkout out source code.

Profile Manifests

Inserting ExampleService in a service profile requires creating or modifying one of the .yml files in orchestration/profiles/rcord of your local repo. In the following, we use rcord.yml as an illustrative example. There are potentially three sections of this file that need attention.

First, modify the xos_services section to identify exampleservice as a service to include in the profile. Doing this effectively points the build system at the model and synchronizer specifications you've just defined.

xos_services:
  ... (lines omitted)...
  - name: exampleservice
    path: orchestration/xos_services/exampleservice
    keypair: exampleservice_rsa
    synchronizer: true

Second, optionally tell the build system to download and install an image into CORD. In our particular case, ExampleService uses the trusty-server-multi-nic that is included in R-CORD for other purposes.

xos_images:
  - name: "trusty-server-multi-nic".
    url: "http://www.vicci.org/opencloud/trusty-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img.20170201"
    checksum:
    "sha256:ebf007ba3ec1043b7cd011fc6668e2a1d1d4c69c41071e8513ab355df7a057cb"
  ... (lines omitted)...

Third, optionally specify any GUI extensions associated with the service. This is done in the enabled_gui_extensions section of the profile manifest. ExampleService does not include a GUI extension.

Other Build-Related Configuration

Today, a few other build-related configuration files require editing to produce a deployment that includes ExampleService. (These details will be hidden in future releases.)

• Add the service's synchronizer image to build/docker_images.yml

• Because the build system is integrated with the git and repo tools, if your service is not already checked into gerrit.opencord.org, you will also need to add the service to the manifest file CORD_ROOT/.repo/manifest.xml. Then run git init in the service’s source tree.

Provision, Control, and Use the Service

Once ExampleService is on-boarded into a running POD, it is available to be provisioned, controlled and used. This can be done via the CORD GUI or REST API, but the most common way is to input a TOSCA workflow into the running POD. Typically, each service contributes a TOSCA recipe to run as soon as the POD comes up (i.e., as the last stage of the build system), so as to verify that the installation was successful.

This recipe is generated from a Jinja2 template, which is customized at build-time with specific details for the target POD (e.g., the site that hosts the POD). This results in a .yaml TOSCA file that is passed to the deployed POD and executed.

The ExampleService template is defined by the following file:

build/platform-install/roles/exampleservice-config/templates/test-exampleservice.yaml.j2

It is an historical artifact that this template is in the build/platform-install/roles/exampleservice-config/templates directory. Templates for new services are instead located in build/platform-install/roles/cord-profile/templates. For example, see template-service.yaml.j2 in that directory for a template similar to the one used for ExampleService.

The first part of test-exampleservice.yaml.j2 includes some core object reference that ExampleService uses, for example, the trusty-server-multic-nic image, the small flavor, and both the management_network and the public_network.

---
tosca_definitions_version: tosca_simple_yaml_1_0

imports:
   - custom_types/slice.yaml
   - custom_types/site.yaml
   - custom_types/image.yaml
   - custom_types/flavor.yaml
   - custom_types/network.yaml
   - custom_types/networktemplate.yaml
   - custom_types/networkslice.yaml
   - custom_types/exampleservice.yaml
   - custom_types/exampleserviceinstance.yaml

description: configure exampleservice

topology_template:
  node_templates:

# site, image, fully created in deployment.yaml
    {{ site_name }}:
      type: tosca.nodes.Site
      properties:
        must-exist: true
        name: {{ site_name }}

    m1.small:
      type: tosca.nodes.Flavor
      properties:
        name: m1.small
        must-exist: true

    trusty-server-multi-nic:
      type: tosca.nodes.Image
      properties:
        name: trusty-server-multi-nic
        must-exist: true

# private network template, fully created somewhere else
    private:
      type: tosca.nodes.NetworkTemplate
      properties:
        must-exist: true
        name: Private

# management networks, fully created in management-net.yaml
    management_network:
      type: tosca.nodes.Network
      properties:
        must-exist: true
        name: management

# public network, fully created somewhere else
    public_network:
      type: tosca.nodes.Network
      properties:
        must-exist: true
        name: public

This is followed by the specification of a private network used by ExampleService :

    exampleservice_network:
      type: tosca.nodes.Network
      properties:
          name: exampleservice_network
          labels: exampleservice_private_network
      requirements:
          - template:
              node: private
              relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne
          - owner:
              node: {{ site_name }}_exampleservice
              relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne

The next part of the workflow provisions the Slice (and related instances and networks) in which ExampleService runs. These definitions reference the dependencies established above.

# CORD Slices
    {{ site_name }}_exampleservice:
      description: Example Service Slice
      type: tosca.nodes.Slice
      properties:
          name: {{ site_name }}_exampleservice
          default_isolation: vm
          network: noauto
      requirements:
          - site:
              node: mysite
              relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne
          - service:
              node: exampleservice
              relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne
          - default_image:
              node: trusty-server-multi-nic
              relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne
          - default_flavor:
              node: m1.small
              relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne

# CORD NetworkSlices
    exampleservice_slice_management_network:
      type: tosca.nodes.NetworkSlice
      requirements:
        - network:
            node: management_network
            relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne
        - slice:
            node: {{ site_name }}_exampleservice
            relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne

    exampleservice_slice_public_network:
      type: tosca.nodes.NetworkSlice
      requirements:
        - network:
            node: public_network
            relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne
        - slice:
            node: {{ site_name }}_exampleservice
            relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne

    exampleservice_slice_exampleservice_network:
      type: tosca.nodes.NetworkSlice
      requirements:
        - network:
            node: exampleservice_network
            relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne
        - slice:
            node: {{ site_name }}_exampleservice
            relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne

Finally, the recipe instantiates the service object that represents ExampleService (exampleservice) and spins up a Service Instance on behalf of the first tenant (exampletenant1).

   exampleservice:
      type: tosca.nodes.ExampleService
      properties:
        name: exampleservice
        public_key: {{ lookup('file', config_cord_profile_dir + '/key_import/exampleservice_rsa.pub') }}
        private_key_fn: /opt/xos/services/exampleservice/keys/exampleservice_rsa
        service_message: hello
      artifacts:
        pubkey: /opt/cord_profile/key_import/exampleservice_rsa.pub

    exampletenant1:
      type: tosca.nodes.ExampleServiceInstance
      properties:
        name: exampletenant1
        tenant_message: world
      requirements:
        - owner:
            node: exampleservice
            relationship: tosca.relationships.BelongsToOne

Note that these definitions initialize the service_message and tenant_message, respectively. As a consequence, sending an HTTP GET request to ExampleService will result in the response: hello world. Subsequently, the user can interact with ExampleService via CORD's GUI or REST API to change those values.