[dpdk-users] Generic Virtualization approach of DPDK based application using SR-IOV and PCI Passthrough to be compatible with all Hardware NICs

[Hirok J. Bora]

Avoid SR-IOV and implement OVS on the host. Implement acceleration at host
level first then guest level, if needed.

SR-IOV does not provide L2 level switching flexibility. Do use overlay
between ovs and the guest, implement vxlan. This will give you 100% control
on the HW. All the best 👍

On Sat, Feb 1, 2020, 10:50 PM Suchetha p <suchetha2005 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> We are trying to bring up KVM based VMs on HP Gen10 Servers running on RHEL
> 7.6 and having Intel X710 NIC's.
>
> The VMs are also running on RHEL 7.6 and the DPDK version used in the guest
> application is 18.08.
>
> Intel DPDK VF drivers (igb_uio) compiled and loaded currently in our VM are
> not compatible with the Host PF drivers(vfio-pci) for Intel X710 Ethernet
> NICs.
>
> The igb_uio driver may be only compatible with Intel NICs like 82599 as it
> worked in our lab for HP Gen9 servers running RHEL 7.6 having Intel 82599
> NICs.
>
> Issues observed with DPDK VF driver igb_uio for Intel X710 NICs:
>
> The outgoing packets from DPDK application are leaving VM via VF towards
> Host’s Physical ports and reaching remote Host’s Physical ports.
>
> But the incoming packets from Host’s Physical port are not reaching VM via
> VF.
>
> Could you please confirm whether igb_uio driver is compatible with only
> Intel NICs like 82599 ?
>
> So we had to change PCI device binding to another driver vfio-pci available
> in RHEL7.
>
> But based on the debugging of our DPDK based application with VF driver
> vfio-pci on X710 NICs we observed that the incoming packets are VLAN
> stripped by HW when the OFFLOAD flags are not set for the same.
>
> why  does X710 NIC VF driver remove the VLAN without RX offload VLAN strip
> flags set?
>
> Could you please check and confirm if the unexpected VLAN removal behaviour
> of X710 NIC VF driver vfio-pci is a known bug?
>
> We want to generalize DPDK implementation for all HW NICs.Could you please
> clarify if this is achievable with igb_uio or vfio-pci driver ?
>
> We would  appreciate if you could provide your feedback and suggestions
> towards generic solution.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Suchetha
>