[ovs-discuss] Best 10GB adapter for offloading OVS

Kyle Mestery (kmestery) kmestery at cisco.com
Wed Mar 27 18:13:50 UTC 2013


On Mar 27, 2013, at 12:41 PM, Jesse Gross <jesse at nicira.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 6:06 AM, Atam <atamgp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> OVS is a software solution switch as i understand.  It is able to utilize
>> offloading features of the Ethernet adapter I read somewhere...
>> 
>> - What features are those? Is it desirable to invest in 10GB adapters with
>> full TCP chimney support like Emulex (OCe11102) or Broadcom (57810S) ? Or is
>> Intel intelligent offloading the same for OVS?
>> - Is OVS using virtual function available on the adapter (now or in the
>> future)?
>>  e.g. Intel x540 adaters support 64 VF's per port. Around the same for
>> Emulex and Broadcom.
>> But Solarflare (SFN5121T) supports 254 VF's. Will that have an effect on
>> OVM?
> 
> OVS does not use any of these.  Most of them have implications for the
> entire stack, so if you are using them currently (I suspect you are
> not) you need to evaluate your requirements.
> 
For VFs, there should be nothing special about how OVS uses those. The
VFs each show up as a separate interface on the Linux host, and you can
add those to OVS bridges as you would a normal physical link. Now if you
want OVS to somehow orchestrate the VF creation process or something,
that's outside the current scope of OVS.

Thanks,
Kyle

>> - For best performance and  minimal CPU overhead is there something else
>> (not mentioned above)  I should look into when comparing 10GB nics?
> 
> The actual implementation of the NIC, stateless offloads, driver
> quality, etc. will all have an impact on performance.  You should
> evaluate different cards with your workload
> 
>> - If i use OVS on a compute node with KVM as hypervisor, what will decide
>> the maximum number of virtual nic's supported?
>>  e.g. My goal is to have max 100 vps with each max 4 vnics = max 400 vnics
>> on 1 10GB port/adapter... which is why i want the best adapter for this
>> purpose...with maximum offloading of OVS.
> 
> This is affected by many factors and not significantly by OVS.
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