Enable OpenContrail DPDK¶

OpenContrail 4.x uses DPDK libraries version 17.02.

A workload running on a DPDK vRouter does not provide better pps if an application is not DPDK-aware. The performance result is the same as for kernel vRouter.

To enable the OpenContrail DPDK pinning:

1. Verify that you have performed the following procedures:

   1. Enable Huge Pages
   2. Configure NUMA and CPU pinning architecture

2. Verify your NUMA nodes on the host operating system to identify the available vCPUs. For example:

   lscpu | grep NUMA
   NUMA node(s):          1
   NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-11
   

3. Include the following class to cluster.<name>.openstack.compute and configure the vhost0 interface:

   classes:
   ...
   - system.opencontrail.compute.dpdk
   ...
   parameters:
     linux:
       network:
        interfaces:
           ...
           # other interface setup
           ...
           vhost0:
             enabled: true
             type: eth
             address: ${_param:single_address}
             netmask: 255.255.255.0
             name_servers:
             - 8.8.8.8
             - 1.1.1.1
   

4. Set the parameters in cluster.<name>.openstack.init on all compute nodes:

   • compute_vrouter_taskset

     Hexadecimal mask of CPUs used for DPDK-vRouter processes

   • compute_vrouter_socket_mem

     Set of amount HugePages in Megabytes to be used by vRouter-DPDK taken for each NUMA node. Set size is equal to NUMA nodes count, elements are divided by comma

   • compute_vrouter_dpdk_pci

     PCI of a DPDK NIC. In case of BOND there must be 0000:00:00.0

5. Calculate the hexadecimal mask. To enhance vRouter with DPDK technology, several isolated host CPUs should be used for such DPDK processes as statistics, queue management, memory management, and poll-mode drivers. To perform this, you need to configure the hexadecimal mask of CPUs to be consumed by vRouter-DPDK.

   The way to calculate the hexadecimal mask is simple as a set of CPUs corresponds to the bits sequence size of CPUs number. 0 on i-th place in this sequence means that CPU number i will not be taken for usage, and 1 has the opposite meaning. Simple translation of binary-to-hexadecimal based on bit sequence of size 24 is illustrated below (vRouter is bound to 4 cores: 14,13,2,1.)

   

6. Pass the hexadecimal mask to vRouter-DPDK command line using the following parameters. For example:

   compute_vrouter_taskset: "-c 1,2" # or hexadecimal 0x6
   compute_vrouter_socket_mem: '1024' # or '1024,1024' for 2 NUMA nodes
   

7. Specify the MAC address and in some cases PCI for every node.

   Example

   openstack_compute_node02:
     name: ${_param:openstack_compute_node02_hostname}
     domain: ${_param:cluster_domain}
     classes:
     - cluster.${_param:cluster_name}.openstack.compute
     params:
       salt_master_host: ${_param:reclass_config_master}
       linux_system_codename: trusty
       compute_vrouter_dpdk_mac_address: 00:1b:21:87:21:99
       compute_vrouter_dpdk_pci: "'0000:05:00.1'"
       primary_first_nic: enp5s0f1 # NIC for vRouter bind
   

8. Select from the following options:

   • If you are performing the initial deployment of your environment, proceed with the further environment configurations.

   • If you are making changes to an existing environment, re-run salt configuration on the Salt Master node:

     salt "cmp*" state.sls opencontrail
     

     Note

     For the changes to take effect, servers require a reboot.

9. If you need to set different values for each compute node, define them in cluster.<NAME>.infra.config.

   Example

   openstack_compute_node02:
     name: ${_param:openstack_compute_node02_hostname}
     domain: ${_param:cluster_domain}
     classes:
     - cluster.${_param:cluster_name}.openstack.compute
     params:
       salt_master_host: ${_param:reclass_config_master}
       linux_system_codename: trusty
       compute_vrouter_dpdk_mac_address: 00:1b:21:87:21:99
       compute_vrouter_dpdk_pci: "'0000:05:00.1'"
       compute_vrouter_taskset: "-c 1,2"
       compute_vrouter_socket_mem: "1024"
       primary_first_nic: enp5s0f1 # NIC for vRouter bind