[ovs-discuss] Open vSwitch compatibility with certain NICs/drivers

[Jesse Gross]

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 8:43 PM, Christos Argyropoulos
<cargious at netmode.ntua.gr> wrote:
> Hi there,
> i would like to ask if there is any preference between Broadcom and Intel
> NICs in terms of drivers compatibility and performance when you are running
> latest stable OVS kernel module on RedHat/CentOS ?
>
> The question is crucial due to the number of NICs I am going to install (80
> Gig ports)..
>
> I have seen before problems like Linux VLAN driver bug
> (http://openvswitch.org/cgi-bin/ovsman.cgi?page=utilities%2Fovs-vlan-bug-workaround.8.in)
> and I have also faced problems with vlan tagging and a Juniper MX-80 box to
> the other side (MX was dropping the VLAN tagged frames when they were
> created from a OVS vlan interface but not when they were created from a
> Linux interface to the same machine !). I do not want to bother you with the
> latter case, as i managed to send VLAN tagged frames to my MX-80 using an
> attached native Linux interface to my OVS bridge instance.

vlans have historically been the major problem with driver
compatibility in OVS.  This has been fixed in new kernels but RHEL
hasn't been updated to use those yet.  As far as performance, there
are a number different features that vary between cards.  I would
recommend doing some testing with your workloads first.