[dpdk-users] VPP / DPDK issue with failsafe adapters

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 14:25:06 -0500
Chris King <chrisking64 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I have been reaching out for support for a VPP / DPDK issue on the fd.io
> forums here:
> https://lists.fd.io/g/vpp-dev/topic/interface_activation_problem/69987045
> 
> Since my problem may be DPDK related (unsure) or at the boundary between
> VPP and DPDK, I thought I would reach out here as well.
> 
> Here is the latest context and any insights would be appreciated:
> 
> Scenario: I am having difficulty getting my VPP interfaces activating
> properly. I am trying to use DPDK-enabled netvsc devices with VPP in Ubuntu
> 18.04 in Azure.
>

Recent versions of VPP decided to do a native Mellanox driver and no longer
use the DPDK Mellanox driver. Since the native Mellanox driver is not visible
to DPDK, the failsafe (and netvsc PMD) can not manage the devices.

I got VPP working with failsafe and native netvsc PMD on earlier release of
VPP. But the VPP developers decided that a native Mellanox driver would avoid
the extra overhead of going from VPP to DPDK. In the process, they broke Azure.

This is a VPP problem (they broke it, they need to fix it). There really isn't
anything in DPDK that can be done to help. If VPP insists on doing their own
Mellanox native driver, then they need to do their own native VMBus driver.