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Using Open vSwitch with DPDK

Open vSwitch can use Intel(R) DPDK lib to operate entirely in userspace. This file explains how to install and use Open vSwitch in such a mode.

The DPDK support of Open vSwitch is considered experimental. It has not been thoroughly tested.

This version of Open vSwitch should be built manually with configure and make.

OVS needs a system with 1GB hugepages support.

Building and Installing:

Required: DPDK 16.04 Optional (if building with vhost-cuse): fuse, fuse-devel (libfuse-dev on Debian/Ubuntu)

  1. Configure build & install DPDK:

  2. Set $DPDK_DIR

    export DPDK_DIR=/usr/src/dpdk-16.04
cd $DPDK_DIR

  3. Then run make install to build and install the library. For default install without IVSHMEM:

    make install T=x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc DESTDIR=install

    To include IVSHMEM (shared memory):

    make install T=x86_64-ivshmem-linuxapp-gcc DESTDIR=install

    For further details refer to http://dpdk.org/

  4. Configure & build the Linux kernel:

    Refer to intel-dpdk-getting-started-guide.pdf for understanding DPDK kernel requirement.

  5. Configure & build OVS:

    • Non IVSHMEM:

      export DPDK_BUILD=$DPDK_DIR/x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc/

    • IVSHMEM:

      export DPDK_BUILD=$DPDK_DIR/x86_64-ivshmem-linuxapp-gcc/

    cd $(OVS_DIR)/
./boot.sh
./configure --with-dpdk=$DPDK_BUILD [CFLAGS="-g -O2 -Wno-cast-align"]
make

    Note: 'clang' users may specify the '-Wno-cast-align' flag to suppress DPDK cast-align warnings.

To have better performance one can enable aggressive compiler optimizations and use the special instructions(popcnt, crc32) that may not be available on all machines. Instead of typing make, type:

make CFLAGS='-O3 -march=native'

Refer to INSTALL.userspace.md for general requirements of building userspace OVS.

Using the DPDK with ovs-vswitchd:

  1. Setup system boot Add the following options to the kernel bootline:

    default_hugepagesz=1GB hugepagesz=1G hugepages=1

  2. Setup DPDK devices:

    DPDK devices can be setup using either the VFIO (for DPDK 1.7+) or UIO modules. UIO requires inserting an out of tree driver igb_uio.ko that is available in DPDK. Setup for both methods are described below.

    • UIO:

      1. insert uio.ko: modprobe uio
      2. insert igb_uio.ko: insmod $DPDK_BUILD/kmod/igb_uio.ko
      3. Bind network device to igb_uio: $DPDK_DIR/tools/dpdk_nic_bind.py --bind=igb_uio eth1

    • VFIO:

      VFIO needs to be supported in the kernel and the BIOS. More information can be found in the DPDK Linux GSG.

      1. Insert vfio-pci.ko: modprobe vfio-pci
      2. Set correct permissions on vfio device: sudo /usr/bin/chmod a+x /dev/vfio and: sudo /usr/bin/chmod 0666 /dev/vfio/*
      3. Bind network device to vfio-pci: $DPDK_DIR/tools/dpdk_nic_bind.py --bind=vfio-pci eth1

  3. Mount the hugetable filesystem

    mount -t hugetlbfs -o pagesize=1G none /dev/hugepages

    Ref to http://www.dpdk.org/doc/quick-start for verifying DPDK setup.

  4. Follow the instructions in INSTALL.md to install only the userspace daemons and utilities (via 'make install').

    1. First time only db creation (or clearing):

      mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/openvswitch
mkdir -p /usr/local/var/run/openvswitch
rm /usr/local/etc/openvswitch/conf.db
ovsdb-tool create /usr/local/etc/openvswitch/conf.db  \
       /usr/local/share/openvswitch/vswitch.ovsschema

    2. Start ovsdb-server

      ovsdb-server --remote=punix:/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock \
    --remote=db:Open_vSwitch,Open_vSwitch,manager_options \
    --private-key=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,private_key \
    --certificate=Open_vSwitch,SSL,certificate \
    --bootstrap-ca-cert=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,ca_cert --pidfile --detach

    3. First time after db creation, initialize:

      ovs-vsctl --no-wait init

  5. Start vswitchd:

    DPDK configuration arguments can be passed to vswitchd via Open_vSwitch other_config column. The recognized configuration options are listed. Defaults will be provided for all values not explicitly set.

    • dpdk-init Specifies whether OVS should initialize and support DPDK ports. This is a boolean, and defaults to false.

    • dpdk-lcore-mask Specifies the CPU cores on which dpdk lcore threads should be spawned. The DPDK lcore threads are used for DPDK library tasks, such as library internal message processing, logging, etc. Value should be in the form of a hex string (so '0x123') similar to the 'taskset' mask input. If not specified, the value will be determined by choosing the lowest CPU core from initial cpu affinity list. Otherwise, the value will be passed directly to the DPDK library. For performance reasons, it is best to set this to a single core on the system, rather than allow lcore threads to float.

    • dpdk-alloc-mem This sets the total memory to preallocate from hugepages regardless of processor socket. It is recommended to use dpdk-socket-mem instead.

    • dpdk-socket-mem Comma separated list of memory to pre-allocate from hugepages on specific sockets.

    • dpdk-hugepage-dir Directory where hugetlbfs is mounted

    • dpdk-extra Extra arguments to provide to DPDK EAL, as previously specified on the command line. Do not pass '--no-huge' to the system in this way. Support for running the system without hugepages is nonexistent.

    • cuse-dev-name Option to set the vhost_cuse character device name.

    • vhost-sock-dir Option to set the path to the vhost_user unix socket files.

    NOTE: Changing any of these options requires restarting the ovs-vswitchd application.

    Open vSwitch can be started as normal. DPDK will be initialized as long as the dpdk-init option has been set to 'true'.

    export DB_SOCK=/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock
ovs-vsctl --no-wait set Open_vSwitch . other_config:dpdk-init=true
ovs-vswitchd unix:$DB_SOCK --pidfile --detach

    If allocated more than one GB hugepage (as for IVSHMEM), set amount and use NUMA node 0 memory:

    ovs-vsctl --no-wait set Open_vSwitch . other_config:dpdk-socket-mem="1024,0"
ovs-vswitchd unix:$DB_SOCK --pidfile --detach

  6. Add bridge & ports

    To use ovs-vswitchd with DPDK, create a bridge with datapath_type "netdev" in the configuration database. For example:

    ovs-vsctl add-br br0 -- set bridge br0 datapath_type=netdev

    Now you can add dpdk devices. OVS expects DPDK device names to start with "dpdk" and end with a portid. vswitchd should print (in the log file) the number of dpdk devices found.

    ovs-vsctl add-port br0 dpdk0 -- set Interface dpdk0 type=dpdk
ovs-vsctl add-port br0 dpdk1 -- set Interface dpdk1 type=dpdk

    Once first DPDK port is added to vswitchd, it creates a Polling thread and polls dpdk device in continuous loop. Therefore CPU utilization for that thread is always 100%.

    Note: creating bonds of DPDK interfaces is slightly different to creating bonds of system interfaces. For DPDK, the interface type must be explicitly set, for example:

    ovs-vsctl add-bond br0 dpdkbond dpdk0 dpdk1 -- set Interface dpdk0 type=dpdk -- set Interface dpdk1 type=dpdk

  7. Add test flows

    Test flow script across NICs (assuming ovs in /usr/src/ovs): Execute script:

    #! /bin/sh
# Move to command directory
cd /usr/src/ovs/utilities/

# Clear current flows
./ovs-ofctl del-flows br0

# Add flows between port 1 (dpdk0) to port 2 (dpdk1)
./ovs-ofctl add-flow br0 in_port=1,action=output:2
./ovs-ofctl add-flow br0 in_port=2,action=output:1

  8. QoS usage example

    Assuming you have a vhost-user port transmitting traffic consisting of packets of size 64 bytes, the following command would limit the egress transmission rate of the port to ~1,000,000 packets per second:

    ovs-vsctl set port vhost-user0 qos=@newqos -- --id=@newqos create qos type=egress-policer other-config:cir=46000000 other-config:cbs=2048

    To examine the QoS configuration of the port:

    ovs-appctl -t ovs-vswitchd qos/show vhost-user0

    To clear the QoS configuration from the port and ovsdb use the following:

    ovs-vsctl destroy QoS vhost-user0 -- clear Port vhost-user0 qos

    For more details regarding egress-policer parameters please refer to the vswitch.xml.

  9. Ingress Policing Example

    Assuming you have a vhost-user port receiving traffic consisting of packets of size 64 bytes, the following command would limit the reception rate of the port to ~1,000,000 packets per second:

    ovs-vsctl set interface vhost-user0 ingress_policing_rate=368000 ingress_policing_burst=1000

    To examine the ingress policer configuration of the port:

    ovs-vsctl list interface vhost-user0

    To clear the ingress policer configuration from the port use the following:

    ovs-vsctl set interface vhost-user0 ingress_policing_rate=0

    For more details regarding ingress-policer see the vswitch.xml.

Performance Tuning:

  1. PMD affinitization
A poll mode driver (pmd) thread handles the I/O of all DPDK
interfaces assigned to it. A pmd thread will busy loop through
the assigned port/rxq's polling for packets, switch the packets
and send to a tx port if required. Typically, it is found that
a pmd thread is CPU bound, meaning that the greater the CPU
occupancy the pmd thread can get, the better the performance. To
that end, it is good practice to ensure that a pmd thread has as
many cycles on a core available to it as possible. This can be
achieved by affinitizing the pmd thread with a core that has no
other workload. See section 7 below for a description of how to
isolate cores for this purpose also.

The following command can be used to specify the affinity of the
pmd thread(s).

`ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:pmd-cpu-mask=<hex string>`

By setting a bit in the mask, a pmd thread is created and pinned
to the corresponding CPU core. e.g. to run a pmd thread on core 1

`ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:pmd-cpu-mask=2`

For more information, please refer to the Open_vSwitch TABLE section in

`man ovs-vswitchd.conf.db`

Note, that a pmd thread on a NUMA node is only created if there is
at least one DPDK interface from that NUMA node added to OVS.
  1. Multiple poll mode driver threads
With pmd multi-threading support, OVS creates one pmd thread
for each NUMA node by default. However, it can be seen that in cases
where there are multiple ports/rxq's producing traffic, performance
can be improved by creating multiple pmd threads running on separate
cores. These pmd threads can then share the workload by each being
responsible for different ports/rxq's. Assignment of ports/rxq's to
pmd threads is done automatically.

The following command can be used to specify the affinity of the
pmd threads.

`ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:pmd-cpu-mask=<hex string>`

A set bit in the mask means a pmd thread is created and pinned
to the corresponding CPU core. e.g. to run pmd threads on core 1 and 2

`ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:pmd-cpu-mask=6`

For more information, please refer to the Open_vSwitch TABLE section in

`man ovs-vswitchd.conf.db`

For example, when using dpdk and dpdkvhostuser ports in a bi-directional
VM loopback as shown below, spreading the workload over 2 or 4 pmd
threads shows significant improvements as there will be more total CPU
occupancy available.

NIC port0 <-> OVS <-> VM <-> OVS <-> NIC port 1

The following command can be used to confirm that the port/rxq assignment
to pmd threads is as required:

`ovs-appctl dpif-netdev/pmd-rxq-show`

This can also be checked with:

```
top -H
taskset -p <pid_of_pmd>
```

To understand where most of the pmd thread time is spent and whether the
caches are being utilized, these commands can be used:

```
# Clear previous stats
ovs-appctl dpif-netdev/pmd-stats-clear

# Check current stats
ovs-appctl dpif-netdev/pmd-stats-show
```
  1. DPDK port Rx Queues
`ovs-vsctl set Interface <DPDK interface> options:n_rxq=<integer>`

The command above sets the number of rx queues for DPDK interface.
The rx queues are assigned to pmd threads on the same NUMA node in a
round-robin fashion.  For more information, please refer to the
Open_vSwitch TABLE section in

`man ovs-vswitchd.conf.db`
  1. Exact Match Cache
Each pmd thread contains one EMC. After initial flow setup in the
datapath, the EMC contains a single table and provides the lowest level
(fastest) switching for DPDK ports. If there is a miss in the EMC then
the next level where switching will occur is the datapath classifier.
Missing in the EMC and looking up in the datapath classifier incurs a
significant performance penalty. If lookup misses occur in the EMC
because it is too small to handle the number of flows, its size can
be increased. The EMC size can be modified by editing the define
EM_FLOW_HASH_SHIFT in lib/dpif-netdev.c.

As mentioned above an EMC is per pmd thread. So an alternative way of
increasing the aggregate amount of possible flow entries in EMC and
avoiding datapath classifier lookups is to have multiple pmd threads
running. This can be done as described in section 2.
  1. Compiler options
The default compiler optimization level is '-O2'. Changing this to
more aggressive compiler optimizations such as '-O3' or
'-Ofast -march=native' with gcc can produce performance gains.
  1. Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT)
With SMT enabled, one physical core appears as two logical cores
which can improve performance.

SMT can be utilized to add additional pmd threads without consuming
additional physical cores. Additional pmd threads may be added in the
same manner as described in section 2. If trying to minimize the use
of physical cores for pmd threads, care must be taken to set the
correct bits in the pmd-cpu-mask to ensure that the pmd threads are
pinned to SMT siblings.

For example, when using 2x 10 core processors in a dual socket system
with HT enabled, /proc/cpuinfo will report 40 logical cores. To use
two logical cores which share the same physical core for pmd threads,
the following command can be used to identify a pair of logical cores.

`cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuN/topology/thread_siblings_list`

where N is the logical core number. In this example, it would show that
cores 1 and 21 share the same physical core. The pmd-cpu-mask to enable
two pmd threads running on these two logical cores (one physical core)
is.

`ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:pmd-cpu-mask=100002`

Note that SMT is enabled by the Hyper-Threading section in the
BIOS, and as such will apply to the whole system. So the impact of
enabling/disabling it for the whole system should be considered
e.g. If workloads on the system can scale across multiple cores,
SMT may very beneficial. However, if they do not and perform best
on a single physical core, SMT may not be beneficial.
  1. The isolcpus kernel boot parameter
isolcpus can be used on the kernel bootline to isolate cores from the
kernel scheduler and hence dedicate them to OVS or other packet
forwarding related workloads. For example a Linux kernel boot-line
could be:

'GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet hugepagesz=1G hugepages=4 default_hugepagesz=1G 'intel_iommu=off' isolcpus=1-19"'
  1. NUMA/Cluster On Die
Ideally inter NUMA datapaths should be avoided where possible as packets
will go across QPI and there may be a slight performance penalty when
compared with intra NUMA datapaths. On Intel Xeon Processor E5 v3,
Cluster On Die is introduced on models that have 10 cores or more.
This makes it possible to logically split a socket into two NUMA regions
and again it is preferred where possible to keep critical datapaths
within the one cluster.

It is good practice to ensure that threads that are in the datapath are
pinned to cores in the same NUMA area. e.g. pmd threads and QEMU vCPUs
responsible for forwarding.
  1. Rx Mergeable buffers
Rx Mergeable buffers is a virtio feature that allows chaining of multiple
virtio descriptors to handle large packet sizes. As such, large packets
are handled by reserving and chaining multiple free descriptors
together. Mergeable buffer support is negotiated between the virtio
driver and virtio device and is supported by the DPDK vhost library.
This behavior is typically supported and enabled by default, however
in the case where the user knows that rx mergeable buffers are not needed
i.e. jumbo frames are not needed, it can be forced off by adding
mrg_rxbuf=off to the QEMU command line options. By not reserving multiple
chains of descriptors it will make more individual virtio descriptors
available for rx to the guest using dpdkvhost ports and this can improve
performance.
  1. Packet processing in the guest
It is good practice whether simply forwarding packets from one
interface to another or more complex packet processing in the guest,
to ensure that the thread performing this work has as much CPU
occupancy as possible. For example when the DPDK sample application
`testpmd` is used to forward packets in the guest, multiple QEMU vCPU
threads can be created. Taskset can then be used to affinitize the
vCPU thread responsible for forwarding to a dedicated core not used
for other general processing on the host system.
  1. DPDK virtio pmd in the guest
dpdkvhostcuse or dpdkvhostuser ports can be used to accelerate the path
to the guest using the DPDK vhost library. This library is compatible with
virtio-net drivers in the guest but significantly better performance can
be observed when using the DPDK virtio pmd driver in the guest. The DPDK
`testpmd` application can be used in the guest as an example application
that forwards packet from one DPDK vhost port to another. An example of
running `testpmd` in the guest can be seen here.

`./testpmd -c 0x3 -n 4 --socket-mem 512 -- --burst=64 -i --txqflags=0xf00 --disable-hw-vlan --forward-mode=io --auto-start`

See below information on dpdkvhostcuse and dpdkvhostuser ports.
See [DPDK Docs] for more information on `testpmd`.

DPDK Rings :

Following the steps above to create a bridge, you can now add dpdk rings as a port to the vswitch. OVS will expect the DPDK ring device name to start with dpdkr and end with a portid.

ovs-vsctl add-port br0 dpdkr0 -- set Interface dpdkr0 type=dpdkr

DPDK rings client test application

Included in the test directory is a sample DPDK application for testing the rings. This is from the base dpdk directory and modified to work with the ring naming used within ovs.

location tests/ovs_client

To run the client :

cd /usr/src/ovs/tests/
ovsclient -c 1 -n 4 --proc-type=secondary -- -n "port id you gave dpdkr"

In the case of the dpdkr example above the "port id you gave dpdkr" is 0.

It is essential to have --proc-type=secondary

The application simply receives an mbuf on the receive queue of the ethernet ring and then places that same mbuf on the transmit ring of the ethernet ring. It is a trivial loopback application.

DPDK rings in VM (IVSHMEM shared memory communications)

In addition to executing the client in the host, you can execute it within a guest VM. To do so you will need a patched qemu. You can download the patch and getting started guide at :

https://01.org/packet-processing/downloads

A general rule of thumb for better performance is that the client application should not be assigned the same dpdk core mask "-c" as the vswitchd.

DPDK vhost:

DPDK 16.04 supports two types of vhost:

  1. vhost-user
  2. vhost-cuse

Whatever type of vhost is enabled in the DPDK build specified, is the type that will be enabled in OVS. By default, vhost-user is enabled in DPDK. Therefore, unless vhost-cuse has been enabled in DPDK, vhost-user ports will be enabled in OVS. Please note that support for vhost-cuse is intended to be deprecated in OVS in a future release.

DPDK vhost-user:

The following sections describe the use of vhost-user 'dpdkvhostuser' ports with OVS.

DPDK vhost-user Prerequisites:

  1. DPDK 16.04 with vhost support enabled as documented in the "Building and Installing section"

  2. QEMU version v2.1.0+

    QEMU v2.1.0 will suffice, but it is recommended to use v2.2.0 if providing your VM with memory greater than 1GB due to potential issues with memory mapping larger areas.

Adding DPDK vhost-user ports to the Switch:

Following the steps above to create a bridge, you can now add DPDK vhost-user as a port to the vswitch. Unlike DPDK ring ports, DPDK vhost-user ports can have arbitrary names, except that forward and backward slashes are prohibited in the names.

  • For vhost-user, the name of the port type is dpdkvhostuser

    ovs-vsctl add-port br0 vhost-user-1 -- set Interface vhost-user-1
type=dpdkvhostuser

    This action creates a socket located at /usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/vhost-user-1, which you must provide to your VM on the QEMU command line. More instructions on this can be found in the next section "DPDK vhost-user VM configuration"

  • If you wish for the vhost-user sockets to be created in a sub-directory of /usr/local/var/run/openvswitch, you may specify this directory in the ovsdb like so:

    ./utilities/ovs-vsctl --no-wait \ set Open_vSwitch . other_config:vhost-sock-dir=subdir

DPDK vhost-user VM configuration:

Follow the steps below to attach vhost-user port(s) to a VM.

  1. Configure sockets. Pass the following parameters to QEMU to attach a vhost-user device:

    -chardev socket,id=char1,path=/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/vhost-user-1
-netdev type=vhost-user,id=mynet1,chardev=char1,vhostforce
-device virtio-net-pci,mac=00:00:00:00:00:01,netdev=mynet1

    ...where vhost-user-1 is the name of the vhost-user port added to the switch. Repeat the above parameters for multiple devices, changing the chardev path and id as necessary. Note that a separate and different chardev path needs to be specified for each vhost-user device. For example you have a second vhost-user port named 'vhost-user-2', you append your QEMU command line with an additional set of parameters:

    -chardev socket,id=char2,path=/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/vhost-user-2
-netdev type=vhost-user,id=mynet2,chardev=char2,vhostforce
-device virtio-net-pci,mac=00:00:00:00:00:02,netdev=mynet2

  2. Configure huge pages. QEMU must allocate the VM's memory on hugetlbfs. vhost-user ports access a virtio-net device's virtual rings and packet buffers mapping the VM's physical memory on hugetlbfs. To enable vhost-user ports to map the VM's memory into their process address space, pass the following paramters to QEMU:

    -object memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=4096M,mem-path=/dev/hugepages,
share=on
-numa node,memdev=mem -mem-prealloc

  3. Optional: Enable multiqueue support The vhost-user interface must be configured in Open vSwitch with the desired amount of queues with:

    ovs-vsctl set Interface vhost-user-2 options:n_rxq=<requested queues>

    QEMU needs to be configured as well. The $q below should match the queues requested in OVS (if $q is more, packets will not be received). The $v is the number of vectors, which is '$q x 2 + 2'.

    -chardev socket,id=char2,path=/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/vhost-user-2
-netdev type=vhost-user,id=mynet2,chardev=char2,vhostforce,queues=$q
-device virtio-net-pci,mac=00:00:00:00:00:02,netdev=mynet2,mq=on,vectors=$v

    If one wishes to use multiple queues for an interface in the guest, the driver in the guest operating system must be configured to do so. It is recommended that the number of queues configured be equal to '$q'.

    For example, this can be done for the Linux kernel virtio-net driver with:

    ethtool -L <DEV> combined <$q>

    A note on the command above:

    -L: Changes the numbers of channels of the specified network device

    combined: Changes the number of multi-purpose channels.

DPDK vhost-cuse:

The following sections describe the use of vhost-cuse 'dpdkvhostcuse' ports with OVS.

DPDK vhost-cuse Prerequisites:

  1. DPDK 16.04 with vhost support enabled as documented in the "Building and Installing section" As an additional step, you must enable vhost-cuse in DPDK by setting the following additional flag in config/common_base:

    CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_VHOST_USER=n

    Following this, rebuild DPDK as per the instructions in the "Building and Installing" section. Finally, rebuild OVS as per step 3 in the "Building and Installing" section - OVS will detect that DPDK has vhost-cuse libraries compiled and in turn will enable support for it in the switch and disable vhost-user support.

  2. Insert the Cuse module:

    modprobe cuse

  3. Build and insert the eventfd_link module:

    cd $DPDK_DIR/lib/librte_vhost/eventfd_link/
make
insmod $DPDK_DIR/lib/librte_vhost/eventfd_link.ko

  4. QEMU version v2.1.0+

    vhost-cuse will work with QEMU v2.1.0 and above, however it is recommended to use v2.2.0 if providing your VM with memory greater than 1GB due to potential issues with memory mapping larger areas. Note: QEMU v1.6.2 will also work, with slightly different command line parameters, which are specified later in this document.

Adding DPDK vhost-cuse ports to the Switch:

Following the steps above to create a bridge, you can now add DPDK vhost-cuse as a port to the vswitch. Unlike DPDK ring ports, DPDK vhost-cuse ports can have arbitrary names.

  • For vhost-cuse, the name of the port type is dpdkvhostcuse

    ovs-vsctl add-port br0 vhost-cuse-1 -- set Interface vhost-cuse-1
type=dpdkvhostcuse

    When attaching vhost-cuse ports to QEMU, the name provided during the add-port operation must match the ifname parameter on the QEMU command line. More instructions on this can be found in the next section.

DPDK vhost-cuse VM configuration:

vhost-cuse ports use a Linux* character device to communicate with QEMU. By default it is set to /dev/vhost-net. It is possible to reuse this standard device for DPDK vhost, which makes setup a little simpler but it is better practice to specify an alternative character device in order to avoid any conflicts if kernel vhost is to be used in parallel.

  1. This step is only needed if using an alternative character device.

    The new character device filename must be specified in the ovsdb:

     `./utilities/ovs-vsctl --no-wait set Open_vSwitch . \
                   other_config:cuse-dev-name=my-vhost-net`

    In the example above, the character device to be used will be /dev/my-vhost-net.

  2. This step is only needed if reusing the standard character device. It will conflict with the kernel vhost character device so the user must first remove it.

    `rm -rf /dev/vhost-net`

3a. Configure virtio-net adaptors: The following parameters must be passed to the QEMU binary:

 ```
 -netdev tap,id=<id>,script=no,downscript=no,ifname=<name>,vhost=on
 -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net1,mac=<mac>
 ```

 Repeat the above parameters for multiple devices.

 The DPDK vhost library will negiotiate its own features, so they
 need not be passed in as command line params. Note that as offloads are
 disabled this is the equivalent of setting:

 `csum=off,gso=off,guest_tso4=off,guest_tso6=off,guest_ecn=off`

3b. If using an alternative character device. It must be also explicitly passed to QEMU using the vhostfd argument:

 ```
 -netdev tap,id=<id>,script=no,downscript=no,ifname=<name>,vhost=on,
 vhostfd=<open_fd>
 -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net1,mac=<mac>
 ```

 The open file descriptor must be passed to QEMU running as a child
 process. This could be done with a simple python script.

   ```
   #!/usr/bin/python
   fd = os.open("/dev/usvhost", os.O_RDWR)
   subprocess.call("qemu-system-x86_64 .... -netdev tap,id=vhostnet0,\
                    vhost=on,vhostfd=" + fd +"...", shell=True)

Alternatively the qemu-wrap.py script can be used to automate the requirements specified above and can be used in conjunction with libvirt if desired. See the "DPDK vhost VM configuration with QEMU wrapper" section below.

  1. Configure huge pages: QEMU must allocate the VM's memory on hugetlbfs. Vhost ports access a virtio-net device's virtual rings and packet buffers mapping the VM's physical memory on hugetlbfs. To enable vhost-ports to map the VM's memory into their process address space, pass the following parameters to QEMU:

    -object memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=4096M,mem-path=/dev/hugepages, share=on -numa node,memdev=mem -mem-prealloc

    Note: For use with an earlier QEMU version such as v1.6.2, use the following to configure hugepages instead:

    -mem-path /dev/hugepages -mem-prealloc

DPDK vhost-cuse VM configuration with QEMU wrapper:

The QEMU wrapper script automatically detects and calls QEMU with the necessary parameters. It performs the following actions:

  • Automatically detects the location of the hugetlbfs and inserts this into the command line parameters.
  • Automatically open file descriptors for each virtio-net device and inserts this into the command line parameters.
  • Calls QEMU passing both the command line parameters passed to the script itself and those it has auto-detected.

Before use, you must edit the configuration parameters section of the script to point to the correct emulator location and set additional settings. Of these settings, emul_path and us_vhost_path must be set. All other settings are optional.

To use directly from the command line simply pass the wrapper some of the QEMU parameters: it will configure the rest. For example:

qemu-wrap.py -cpu host -boot c -hda <disk image> -m 4096 -smp 4
  --enable-kvm -nographic -vnc none -net none -netdev tap,id=net1,
  script=no,downscript=no,ifname=if1,vhost=on -device virtio-net-pci,
  netdev=net1,mac=00:00:00:00:00:01

DPDK vhost-cuse VM configuration with libvirt:

If you are using libvirt, you must enable libvirt to access the character device by adding it to controllers cgroup for libvirtd using the following steps.

 1. In `/etc/libvirt/qemu.conf` add/edit the following lines:

    ```
    1) clear_emulator_capabilities = 0
    2) user = "root"
    3) group = "root"
    4) cgroup_device_acl = [
           "/dev/null", "/dev/full", "/dev/zero",
           "/dev/random", "/dev/urandom",
           "/dev/ptmx", "/dev/kvm", "/dev/kqemu",
           "/dev/rtc", "/dev/hpet", "/dev/net/tun",
           "/dev/<my-vhost-device>",
           "/dev/hugepages"]
    ```

    <my-vhost-device> refers to "vhost-net" if using the `/dev/vhost-net`
    device. If you have specificed a different name in the database
    using the "other_config:cuse-dev-name" parameter, please specify that
    filename instead.

 2. Disable SELinux or set to permissive mode

 3. Restart the libvirtd process
    For example, on Fedora:

      `systemctl restart libvirtd.service`

After successfully editing the configuration, you may launch your vhost-enabled VM. The XML describing the VM can be configured like so within the qemu:commandline section:

 1. Set up shared hugepages:

 ```
 <qemu:arg value='-object'/>
 <qemu:arg value='memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=4096M,mem-path=/dev/hugepages,share=on'/>
 <qemu:arg value='-numa'/>
 <qemu:arg value='node,memdev=mem'/>
 <qemu:arg value='-mem-prealloc'/>
 ```

 2. Set up your tap devices:

 ```
 <qemu:arg value='-netdev'/>
 <qemu:arg value='type=tap,id=net1,script=no,downscript=no,ifname=vhost0,vhost=on'/>
 <qemu:arg value='-device'/>
 <qemu:arg value='virtio-net-pci,netdev=net1,mac=00:00:00:00:00:01'/>
 ```

 Repeat for as many devices as are desired, modifying the id, ifname
 and mac as necessary.

 Again, if you are using an alternative character device (other than
 `/dev/vhost-net`), please specify the file descriptor like so:

 `<qemu:arg value='type=tap,id=net3,script=no,downscript=no,ifname=vhost0,vhost=on,vhostfd=<open_fd>'/>`

 Where <open_fd> refers to the open file descriptor of the character device.
 Instructions of how to retrieve the file descriptor can be found in the
 "DPDK vhost VM configuration" section.
 Alternatively, the process is automated with the qemu-wrap.py script,
 detailed in the next section.

Now you may launch your VM using virt-manager, or like so:

`virsh create my_vhost_vm.xml`

DPDK vhost-cuse VM configuration with libvirt and QEMU wrapper:

To use the qemu-wrapper script in conjuntion with libvirt, follow the steps in the previous section before proceeding with the following steps:

  1. Place qemu-wrap.py in libvirtd's binary search PATH ($PATH) Ideally in the same directory that the QEMU binary is located.

  2. Ensure that the script has the same owner/group and file permissions as the QEMU binary.

  3. Update the VM xml file using "virsh edit VM.xml"

    1. Set the VM to use the launch script. Set the emulator path contained in the <emulator><emulator/> tags. For example, replace:

      <emulator>/usr/bin/qemu-kvm<emulator/>

      with:

      <emulator>/usr/bin/qemu-wrap.py<emulator/>

  4. Edit the Configuration Parameters section of the script to point to the correct emulator location and set any additional options. If you are using a alternative character device name, please set "us_vhost_path" to the location of that device. The script will automatically detect and insert the correct "vhostfd" value in the QEMU command line arguments.

  5. Use virt-manager to launch the VM

Running ovs-vswitchd with DPDK backend inside a VM

Please note that additional configuration is required if you want to run ovs-vswitchd with DPDK backend inside a QEMU virtual machine. Ovs-vswitchd creates separate DPDK TX queues for each CPU core available. This operation fails inside QEMU virtual machine because, by default, VirtIO NIC provided to the guest is configured to support only single TX queue and single RX queue. To change this behavior, you need to turn on 'mq' (multiqueue) property of all virtio-net-pci devices emulated by QEMU and used by DPDK. You may do it manually (by changing QEMU command line) or, if you use Libvirt, by adding the following string:

<driver name='vhost' queues='N'/>

to sections of all network devices used by DPDK. Parameter 'N' determines how many queues can be used by the guest.

Restrictions:

  • Work with 1500 MTU, needs few changes in DPDK lib to fix this issue.
  • Currently DPDK port does not make use any offload functionality.
  • DPDK-vHost support works with 1G huge pages.

ivshmem:

  • If you run Open vSwitch with smaller page sizes (e.g. 2MB), you may be unable to share any rings or mempools with a virtual machine. This is because the current implementation of ivshmem works by sharing a single 1GB huge page from the host operating system to any guest operating system through the Qemu ivshmem device. When using smaller page sizes, multiple pages may be required to hold the ring descriptors and buffer pools. The Qemu ivshmem device does not allow you to share multiple file descriptors to the guest operating system. However, if you want to share dpdkr rings with other processes on the host, you can do this with smaller page sizes.

Platform and Network Interface:

  • By default with DPDK 16.04, a maximum of 64 TX queues can be used with an Intel XL710 Network Interface on a platform with more than 64 logical cores. If a user attempts to add an XL710 interface as a DPDK port type to a system as described above, an error will be reported that initialization failed for the 65th queue. OVS will then roll back to the previous successful queue initialization and use that value as the total number of TX queues available with queue locking. If a user wishes to use more than 64 queues and avoid locking, then the CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_I40E_QUEUE_NUM_PER_PF config parameter in DPDK must be increased to the desired number of queues. Both DPDK and OVS must be recompiled for this change to take effect.

Bug Reporting:

Please report problems to [email protected].