OVS DPDK ADVANCED INSTALL GUIDE

1. Overview

The Advanced Install Guide explains how to improve OVS performance using DPDK datapath. This guide also provides information on tuning, system configuration, troubleshooting, static code analysis and testcases.

2. Building Shared Library

DPDK can be built as static or shared library and shall be linked by applications using DPDK datapath. The section lists steps to build shared library and dynamically link DPDK against OVS.

Note: Minor performance loss is seen with OVS when using shared DPDK library as compared to static library.

Check section INSTALL DPDK, INSTALL OVS of INSTALL.DPDK on download instructions for DPDK and OVS.

Configure the DPDK library

Set CONFIG_RTE_BUILD_SHARED_LIB=y in config/common_base to generate shared DPDK library

Build and install DPDK

For Default install (without IVSHMEM), set export DPDK_TARGET=x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc For IVSHMEM case, set export DPDK_TARGET=x86_64-ivshmem-linuxapp-gcc
```
export DPDK_DIR=/usr/src/dpdk-16.04
export DPDK_BUILD=$DPDK_DIR/$DPDK_TARGET
make install T=$DPDK_TARGET DESTDIR=install
```
Build, Install and Setup OVS.

Export the DPDK shared library location and setup OVS as listed in section 3.3 of INSTALL.DPDK.

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$DPDK_DIR/x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc/lib

3. System Configuration

To achieve optimal OVS performance, the system can be configured and that includes BIOS tweaks, Grub cmdline additions, better understanding of NUMA nodes and apt selection of PCIe slots for NIC placement.

3.1 Recommended BIOS settings

| Settings                  | values    | comments
|---------------------------|-----------|-----------
| C3 power state            | Disabled  | -
| C6 power state            | Disabled  | -
| MLC Streamer              | Enabled   | -
| MLC Spacial prefetcher    | Enabled   | -
| DCU Data prefetcher       | Enabled   | -
| DCA                       | Enabled   | -
| CPU power and performance | Performance -
| Memory RAS and perf       |           | -
  config-> NUMA optimized   | Enabled   | -

3.2 PCIe Slot Selection

The fastpath performance also depends on factors like the NIC placement, Channel speeds between PCIe slot and CPU, proximity of PCIe slot to the CPU cores running DPDK application. Listed below are the steps to identify right PCIe slot.

Retrieve host details using cmd dmidecode -t baseboard | grep "Product Name"
Download the technical specification for Product listed eg: S2600WT2.
Check the Product Architecture Overview on the Riser slot placement, CPU sharing info and also PCIe channel speeds.

example: On S2600WT, CPU1 and CPU2 share Riser Slot 1 with Channel speed between CPU1 and Riser Slot1 at 32GB/s, CPU2 and Riser Slot1 at 16GB/s. Running DPDK app on CPU1 cores and NIC inserted in to Riser card Slots will optimize OVS performance in this case.
Check the Riser Card #1 - Root Port mapping information, on the available slots and individual bus speeds. In S2600WT slot 1, slot 2 has high bus speeds and are potential slots for NIC placement.

3.3 Advanced Hugepage setup

Allocate and mount 1G Huge pages:

For persistent allocation of huge pages, add the following options to the kernel bootline

Add default_hugepagesz=1GB hugepagesz=1G hugepages=N

For platforms supporting multiple huge page sizes, Add options

default_hugepagesz=<size> hugepagesz=<size> hugepages=N where 'N' = Number of huge pages requested, 'size' = huge page size, optional suffix [kKmMgG]
For run-time allocation of huge pages

echo N > /sys/devices/system/node/nodeX/hugepages/hugepages-1048576kB/nr_hugepages where 'N' = Number of huge pages requested, 'X' = NUMA Node

Note: For run-time allocation of 1G huge pages, Contiguous Memory Allocator(CONFIG_CMA) has to be supported by kernel, check your Linux distro.
Mount huge pages

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

Note: Mount hugepages if not already mounted by default.

3.4 Enable Hyperthreading

Requires BIOS changes

With HT/SMT enabled, A Physical core appears as two logical cores. SMT can be utilized to spawn worker threads on logical cores of the same physical core there by saving additional cores.

With DPDK, When pinning pmd threads to logical cores, 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.

Example System configuration: Dual socket Machine, 2x 10 core processors, HT enabled, 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

3.5 Isolate cores

'isolcpus' option can be used to isolate cores from the linux scheduler. The isolated cores can then be used to dedicatedly run HPC applications/threads. This helps in better application performance due to zero context switching and minimal cache thrashing. To run platform logic on core 0 and isolate cores between 1 and 19 from scheduler, Add isolcpus=1-19 to GRUB cmdline.

Note: It has been verified that core isolation has minimal advantage due to mature Linux scheduler in some circumstances.

3.6 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. If DPDK is built with CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_VHOST_NUMA=y, vHost User ports automatically detect the NUMA socket of the QEMU vCPUs and will be serviced by a PMD from the same node provided a core on this node is enabled in the pmd-cpu-mask.

3.7 Compiler Optimizations

The default compiler optimization level is '-O2'. Changing this to more aggressive compiler optimization such as '-O3 -march=native' with gcc(verified on 5.3.1) can produce performance gains though not siginificant. '-march=native' will produce optimized code on local machine and should be used when SW compilation is done on Testbed.

4. Performance Tuning

4.1 Affinity

For superior performance, DPDK pmd threads and Qemu vCPU threads needs to be affinitized accordingly.

PMD thread Affinity

A poll mode driver (pmd) thread handles the I/O of all DPDK interfaces assigned to it. A pmd thread shall poll the ports for incoming packets, switch the packets and send to tx port. pmd thread is CPU bound, and needs to be affinitized to isolated cores for optimum performance.

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 2

ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:pmd-cpu-mask=4

Note: pmd thread on a NUMA node is only created if there is at least one DPDK interface from that NUMA node added to OVS.
Qemu vCPU thread Affinity

A VM performing simple packet forwarding or running complex packet pipelines has to ensure that the vCPU threads performing the work has as much CPU occupancy as possible.

Example: On a multicore VM, multiple QEMU vCPU threads shall be spawned. when the DPDK 'testpmd' application that does packet forwarding is invoked, 'taskset' cmd should be used to affinitize the vCPU threads to the dedicated isolated cores on the host system.

4.2 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.

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 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

4.3 DPDK physical port Rx Queues

ovs-vsctl set Interface <DPDK interface> options:n_rxq=<integer>

The command above sets the number of rx queues for DPDK physical interface. The rx queues are assigned to pmd threads on the same NUMA node in a round-robin fashion.

4.4 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 4.2.

4.5 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.

5. OVS Testcases

5.1 PHY-VM-PHY [VHOST LOOPBACK]

The section 5.2 in INSTALL.DPDK guide lists steps for PVP loopback testcase and packet forwarding using DPDK testpmd application in the Guest VM. For users wanting to do packet forwarding using kernel stack below are the steps.

ifconfig eth1 1.1.1.2/24
ifconfig eth2 1.1.2.2/24
systemctl stop firewalld.service
systemctl stop iptables.service
sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter=0
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.eth1.rp_filter=0
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.eth2.rp_filter=0
route add -net 1.1.2.0/24 eth2
route add -net 1.1.1.0/24 eth1
arp -s 1.1.2.99 DE:AD:BE:EF:CA:FE
arp -s 1.1.1.99 DE:AD:BE:EF:CA:EE

5.2 PHY-VM-PHY [IVSHMEM]

The steps (1-5) in 3.3 section of INSTALL.DPDK guide will create & initialize DB, start vswitchd and add dpdk devices to bridge br0.

Add DPDK ring port to the bridge

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

Build modified Qemu (Qemu-2.2.1 + ivshmem-qemu-2.2.1.patch)

cd /usr/src/
wget http://wiki.qemu.org/download/qemu-2.2.1.tar.bz2
tar -jxvf qemu-2.2.1.tar.bz2
cd /usr/src/qemu-2.2.1
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/netgroup-polito/un-orchestrator/master/orchestrator/compute_controller/plugins/kvm-libvirt/patches/ivshmem-qemu-2.2.1.patch
patch -p1 < ivshmem-qemu-2.2.1.patch
./configure --target-list=x86_64-softmmu --enable-debug --extra-cflags='-g'
make -j 4

Generate Qemu commandline

mkdir -p /usr/src/cmdline_generator
cd /usr/src/cmdline_generator
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/netgroup-polito/un-orchestrator/master/orchestrator/compute_controller/plugins/kvm-libvirt/cmdline_generator/cmdline_generator.c
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/netgroup-polito/un-orchestrator/master/orchestrator/compute_controller/plugins/kvm-libvirt/cmdline_generator/Makefile
export RTE_SDK=/usr/src/dpdk-16.04
export RTE_TARGET=x86_64-ivshmem-linuxapp-gcc
make
./build/cmdline_generator -m -p dpdkr0 XXX
cmdline=`cat OVSMEMPOOL`

start Guest VM

export VM_NAME=ivshmem-vm
export QCOW2_IMAGE=/root/CentOS7_x86_64.qcow2
export QEMU_BIN=/usr/src/qemu-2.2.1/x86_64-softmmu/qemu-system-x86_64

taskset 0x20 $QEMU_BIN -cpu host -smp 2,cores=2 -hda $QCOW2_IMAGE -m 4096 --enable-kvm -name $VM_NAME -nographic -vnc :2 -pidfile /tmp/vm1.pid $cmdline

Running sample "dpdk ring" app in VM

echo 1024 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /dev/hugepages (if not already mounted)

# Build the DPDK ring application in the VM
export RTE_SDK=/root/dpdk-16.04
export RTE_TARGET=x86_64-ivshmem-linuxapp-gcc
make

# Run dpdkring application
./build/dpdkr -c 1 -n 4 -- -n 0
where "-n 0" refers to ring '0' i.e dpdkr0

6. Vhost Walkthrough

DPDK 16.04 supports two types of vhost:

vhost-user - enabled default
vhost-cuse - Legacy, disabled by default

6.1 vhost-user

Prerequisites:

QEMU version >= 2.2
Adding vhost-user ports to Switch

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 "Adding vhost-user ports to VM"

Note: 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
Adding vhost-user ports to 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 parameters to QEMU:
```
-object memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=4096M,mem-path=/dev/hugepages,
share=on -numa node,memdev=mem -mem-prealloc
```
3. Enable multiqueue support(OPTIONAL)
  
  QEMU needs to be configured to use multiqueue. The $q below is the number of queues. 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
```
  The vhost-user interface will be automatically reconfigured with required number of rx and tx queues after connection of virtio device. Manual configuration of n_rxq is not supported because OVS will work properly only if n_rxq will match number of queues configured in QEMU.
  
  A least 2 PMDs should be configured for the vswitch when using multiqueue. Using a single PMD will cause traffic to be enqueued to the same vhost queue rather than being distributed among different vhost queues for a vhost-user interface.
  
  If traffic destined for a VM configured with multiqueue arrives to the vswitch via a physical DPDK port, then the number of rxqs should also be set to at least 2 for that physical DPDK port. This is required to increase the probability that a different PMD will handle the multiqueue transmission to the guest using a different vhost queue.
  
  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>
```
  where -L: Changes the numbers of channels of the specified network device and combined: Changes the number of multi-purpose channels.
VM Configuration with libvirt
- change the user/group, access control policty and restart libvirtd.
  - In /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf add/edit the following lines
```
user = "root"
group = "root"
```
  - Disable SELinux or set to permissive mode
    
    setenforce 0
  - Restart the libvirtd process, For example, on Fedora
    
    systemctl restart libvirtd.service
- Instantiate the VM
  - Copy the xml configuration from Guest VM using libvirt in to workspace.
  - Start the VM.
    
    virsh create demovm.xml
  - Connect to the guest console
    
    virsh console demovm
- VM configuration
  
  The demovm xml configuration is aimed at achieving out of box performance on VM.
  - The vcpus are pinned to the cores of the CPU socket 0 using vcpupin.
  - Configure NUMA cell and memory shared using memAccess='shared'.
  - Disable mrg_rxbuf='off'.
  Note: For information on libvirt and further tuning refer libvirt.

6.2 vhost-cuse

Prerequisites:

QEMU version >= 2.2
Enable vhost-cuse support
1. Enable vhost cuse support in DPDK
  
  Set CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_VHOST_USER=n in config/common_linuxapp and follow the steps in 2.2 section of INSTALL.DPDK guide to build DPDK with cuse support. 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
```
Adding vhost-cuse ports to Switch

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 cmd line.
Adding vhost-cuse ports to VM

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.
```
./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. In case of reusing kernel vhost character device, there would be conflict user should remove it.
  
  rm -rf /dev/vhost-net
3. Configure virtio-net adapters
  
  The following parameters must be passed to the QEMU binary, repeat the below parameters for multiple devices.
```
-netdev tap,id=<id>,script=no,downscript=no,ifname=<name>,vhost=on
-device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net1,mac=<mac>
```
  The DPDK vhost library will negotiate 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
  
  When using an alternative character device, it must be 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)
```
4. 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
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
```
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:
```
clear_emulator_capabilities = 0
user = "root"
group = "root"
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"]
```
  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

VM Configuration with libvirt & 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 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"
  
  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

6.3 DPDK backend inside 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.This may not work with old versions of QEMU found in some distros and need Qemu version >= 2.2.

7. QOS

Here is an example on QOS usage. 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.

8. Rate Limiting

Here is an example on Ingress Policing usage. 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.

9. Vsperf

Vsperf project goal is to develop vSwitch test framework that can be used to validate the suitability of different vSwitch implementations in a Telco deployment environment. More information can be found in below link.

https://wiki.opnfv.org/display/vsperf/VSperf+Home

Bug Reporting:

Please report problems to bugs@openvswitch.org.

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INSTALL.DPDK-ADVANCED.md

INSTALL.DPDK-ADVANCED.md

OVS DPDK ADVANCED INSTALL GUIDE

Contents

1. Overview

2. Building Shared Library

3. System Configuration

3.1 Recommended BIOS settings

3.2 PCIe Slot Selection

3.3 Advanced Hugepage setup

3.4 Enable Hyperthreading

3.5 Isolate cores

3.6 NUMA/Cluster on Die

3.7 Compiler Optimizations

4. Performance Tuning

4.1 Affinity

4.2 Multiple poll mode driver threads

4.3 DPDK physical port Rx Queues

4.4 Exact Match Cache

4.5 Rx Mergeable buffers

5. OVS Testcases

5.1 PHY-VM-PHY [VHOST LOOPBACK]

5.2 PHY-VM-PHY [IVSHMEM]

6. Vhost Walkthrough

6.1 vhost-user

6.2 vhost-cuse

6.3 DPDK backend inside VM

7. QOS

8. Rate Limiting

9. Vsperf

Bug Reporting:

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INSTALL.DPDK-ADVANCED.md

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INSTALL.DPDK-ADVANCED.md

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OVS DPDK ADVANCED INSTALL GUIDE

Contents

1. Overview

2. Building Shared Library

3. System Configuration

3.1 Recommended BIOS settings

3.2 PCIe Slot Selection

3.3 Advanced Hugepage setup

3.4 Enable Hyperthreading

3.5 Isolate cores

3.6 NUMA/Cluster on Die

3.7 Compiler Optimizations

4. Performance Tuning

4.1 Affinity

4.2 Multiple poll mode driver threads

4.3 DPDK physical port Rx Queues

4.4 Exact Match Cache

4.5 Rx Mergeable buffers

5. OVS Testcases

5.1 PHY-VM-PHY [VHOST LOOPBACK]

5.2 PHY-VM-PHY [IVSHMEM]

6. Vhost Walkthrough

6.1 vhost-user

6.2 vhost-cuse

6.3 DPDK backend inside VM

7. QOS

8. Rate Limiting

9. Vsperf

Bug Reporting: