[dpdk-dev] [ovs-discuss] vswitches performance comparison

Gray, Mark D mark.d.gray at intel.com
Wed Jul 22 10:06:36 CEST 2015


> >>
> >> I'd like to hope that's my methodology problem, but I just follow the
> >> installation guide without any customization.
> >>
> >> Hi Mark, do you have any performance data share with us? Maybe we are
> >> using different type of workloads, like I mentioned I am using
> >> typical data center workload, I guess you are talking about NFV type of
> workload?
> >
> > The number getting floated around on the mailing list recently is
> > 16.5Mpps for phy-phy. However, I don't think we have any iperf data
> > off-hand for your usecase. When we test throughput into the vm we
> > usually generate the traffic externally and send NIC->OVS->VM->OVS-
> >NIC. This is a little different to your setup.
> >
> 
> I guess pmd driver is used inside VM in that case, right?

Yes, but even when we use virtio-net we see the same if not *slightly* better
performance.

> > I do know, however, that ovs-dpdk typically has a much larger
> > throughput than the kernel space datapath.
> >
> 
> I'd like to say it depends on workloads, for small/medium packet size
> workload, that's definitely true, while for TSO size workload, it's not that
> obvious (or worse) as data path overheads are amortized and H/W can be
> leveraged.

For large packets the switch will eventually saturate the NIC at line rate but the
total aggregate throughput of the switch should be faster (you could
add more interfaces for example to take advantage of that). 

TSO is missing from the DPDK ports at the moment but it is something
we plan to look at. We are currently enabling Jumbo frames (which don't
work at the moment).

> > Have you seen this?
> > https://wiki.opnfv.org/characterize_vswitch_performance_for_telco_nfv_
> > use_cases
> >
> 
> Thanks for the pointer, I'll try later.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Jun


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