SR-IOV¶

SR-IOV agent¶

The SR-IOV agent allows you to set the admin state of ports, configure port security (enable and disable spoof checking), and configure QoS rate limiting and minimum bandwidth. You must include the SR-IOV agent on each compute node using SR-IOV ports.

Supported Ethernet controllers¶

The following manufacturers are known to work:

• Intel
• Mellanox
• QLogic

For information on Mellanox SR-IOV Ethernet ConnectX-3/ConnectX-3 Pro cards, see Mellanox: How To Configure SR-IOV VFs.

For information on QLogic SR-IOV Ethernet cards, see User’s Guide OpenStack Deployment with SR-IOV Configuration.

Create Virtual Functions (Compute)¶

Create the VFs for the network interface that will be used for SR-IOV. We use eth3 as PF, which is also used as the interface for the VLAN provider network and has access to the private networks of all machines.

1. Ensure SR-IOV and VT-d are enabled in BIOS.

2. Enable IOMMU in Linux by adding intel_iommu=on to the kernel parameters, for example, using GRUB.

3. On each compute node, create the VFs via the PCI SYS interface:

   # echo '8' > /sys/class/net/eth3/device/sriov_numvfs
   

   Note

   On some PCI devices, observe that when changing the amount of VFs you receive the error Device or resource busy. In this case, you must first set sriov_numvfs to 0, then set it to your new value.

   Note

   A network interface could be used both for PCI passthrough, using the PF, and SR-IOV, using the VFs. If the PF is used, the VF number stored in the sriov_numvfs file is lost. If the PF is attached again to the operating system, the number of VFs assigned to this interface will be zero. To keep the number of VFs always assigned to this interface, modify the interfaces configuration file adding an ifup script command.

   In Ubuntu, modifying the /etc/network/interfaces file:

   auto eth3
   iface eth3 inet dhcp
   pre-up echo '4' > /sys/class/net/eth3/device/sriov_numvfs
   

   In Red Hat, modifying the /sbin/ifup-local file:

   #!/bin/sh
   if [[ "$1" == "eth3" ]]
   then
       echo '4' > /sys/class/net/eth3/device/sriov_numvfs
   fi
   

   Warning

   Alternatively, you can create VFs by passing the max_vfs to the kernel module of your network interface. However, the max_vfs parameter has been deprecated, so the PCI SYS interface is the preferred method.

   You can determine the maximum number of VFs a PF can support:

   # cat /sys/class/net/eth3/device/sriov_totalvfs
   63
   

4. Verify that the VFs have been created and are in up state:

   # lspci | grep Ethernet
   82:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599ES 10-Gigabit SFI/SFP+ Network Connection (rev 01)
   82:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599ES 10-Gigabit SFI/SFP+ Network Connection (rev 01)
   82:10.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
   82:10.2 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
   82:10.4 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
   82:10.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
   82:11.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
   82:11.2 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
   82:11.4 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
   82:11.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
   

   # ip link show eth3
   8: eth3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DEFAULT qlen 1000
      link/ether a0:36:9f:8f:3f:b8 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
      vf 0 MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00, spoof checking on, link-state auto
      vf 1 MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00, spoof checking on, link-state auto
      vf 2 MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00, spoof checking on, link-state auto
      vf 3 MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00, spoof checking on, link-state auto
      vf 4 MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00, spoof checking on, link-state auto
      vf 5 MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00, spoof checking on, link-state auto
      vf 6 MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00, spoof checking on, link-state auto
      vf 7 MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00, spoof checking on, link-state auto
   

   If the interfaces are down, set them to up before launching a guest, otherwise the instance will fail to spawn:

   # ip link set eth3 up
   

5. Persist created VFs on reboot:

   # echo "echo '7' > /sys/class/net/eth3/device/sriov_numvfs" >> /etc/rc.local
   

   Note

   The suggested way of making PCI SYS settings persistent is through the sysfsutils tool. However, this is not available by default on many major distributions.

Whitelist PCI devices nova-compute (Compute)¶

1. Configure which PCI devices the nova-compute service may use. Edit the nova.conf file:

   [default]
   pci_passthrough_whitelist = { "devname": "eth3", "physical_network": "physnet2"}
   

   This tells the Compute service that all VFs belonging to eth3 are allowed to be passed through to instances and belong to the provider network physnet2.

   Alternatively the pci_passthrough_whitelist parameter also supports whitelisting by:

   • PCI address: The address uses the same syntax as in lspci and an asterisk (*) can be used to match anything.

     pci_passthrough_whitelist = { "address": "[[[[<domain>]:]<bus>]:][<slot>][.[<function>]]", "physical_network": "physnet2" }
     

     For example, to match any domain, bus 0a, slot 00, and all functions:

     pci_passthrough_whitelist = { "address": "*:0a:00.*", "physical_network": "physnet2" }
     

   • PCI vendor_id and product_id as displayed by the Linux utility lspci.

     pci_passthrough_whitelist = { "vendor_id": "<id>", "product_id": "<id>", "physical_network": "physnet2" }
     

   If the device defined by the PCI address or devname corresponds to an SR-IOV PF, all VFs under the PF will match the entry. Multiple pci_passthrough_whitelist entries per host are supported.

2. Restart the nova-compute service for the changes to go into effect.

Configure neutron-server (Controller)¶

1. Add sriovnicswitch as mechanism driver. Edit the ml2_conf.ini file on each controller:

   mechanism_drivers = openvswitch,sriovnicswitch
   

2. Add the plugin.ini file as a parameter to the neutron-server service. Edit the appropriate initialization script to configure the neutron-server service to load the plugin configuration file:

   --config-file /etc/neutron/neutron.conf
   --config-file /etc/neutron/plugin.ini
   

3. Restart the neutron-server service.

Configure nova-scheduler (Controller)¶

1. On every controller node running the nova-scheduler service, add PciPassthroughFilter to scheduler_default_filters to enable PciPassthroughFilter by default. Also ensure scheduler_available_filters parameter under the [DEFAULT] section in nova.conf is set to all_filters to enable all filters provided by the Compute service.

   [DEFAULT]
   scheduler_default_filters = RetryFilter, AvailabilityZoneFilter, RamFilter, ComputeFilter, ComputeCapabilitiesFilter, ImagePropertiesFilter, ServerGroupAntiAffinityFilter, ServerGroupAffinityFilter, PciPassthroughFilter
   scheduler_available_filters = nova.scheduler.filters.all_filters
   

2. Restart the nova-scheduler service.

Enable neutron sriov-agent (Compute)¶

1. Install the SR-IOV agent.

2. Edit the sriov_agent.ini file on each compute node. For example:

   [securitygroup]
   firewall_driver = neutron.agent.firewall.NoopFirewallDriver
   
   [sriov_nic]
   physical_device_mappings = physnet2:eth3
   exclude_devices =
   

   Note

   The physical_device_mappings parameter is not limited to be a 1-1 mapping between physical networks and NICs. This enables you to map the same physical network to more than one NIC. For example, if physnet2 is connected to eth3 and eth4, then physnet2:eth3,physnet2:eth4 is a valid option.

   The exclude_devices parameter is empty, therefore, all the VFs associated with eth3 may be configured by the agent. To exclude specific VFs, add them to the exclude_devices parameter as follows:

   exclude_devices = eth1:0000:07:00.2;0000:07:00.3,eth2:0000:05:00.1;0000:05:00.2
   

3. Ensure the neutron sriov-agent runs successfully:

   # neutron-sriov-nic-agent \
     --config-file /etc/neutron/neutron.conf \
     --config-file /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/sriov_agent.ini
   

4. Enable the neutron sriov-agent service.

   If installing from source, you must configure a daemon file for the init system manually.

Launching instances with SR-IOV ports¶

Once configuration is complete, you can launch instances with SR-IOV ports.

1. Get the id of the network where you want the SR-IOV port to be created:

   $ net_id=`neutron net-show net04 | grep "\ id\ " | awk '{ print $4 }'`
   

2. Create the SR-IOV port. vnic_type=direct is used here, but other options include normal, direct-physical, and macvtap:

   $ port_id=`neutron port-create $net_id --name sriov_port --binding:vnic_type direct | grep "\ id\ " | awk '{ print $4 }'`
   

3. Create the instance. Specify the SR-IOV port created in step two for the NIC:

   $ openstack server create --flavor m1.large --image ubuntu_14.04 --nic port-id=$port_id test-sriov
   

   Note

   There are two ways to attach VFs to an instance. You can create an SR-IOV port or use the pci_alias in the Compute service. For more information about using pci_alias, refer to nova-api configuration.