Implementing hardware offloading with OVN¶

The OVN chassis can be configured to prepare network interface cards (NICs) for use with hardware offloading and make them available to OpenStack.

Note

For general information on OVN, refer to the main Open Virtual Network (OVN) page.

Hardware offload support makes use of SR-IOV as an underlying mechanism to accelerate the data path between a virtual machine instance and the NIC hardware. But as opposed to traditional SR-IOV support the accelerated ports can be connected to the Open vSwitch integration bridge which allows instances to take part in regular tenant networks. The NIC also supports hardware offloading of tunnel encapsulation and de-encapsulation.

With OVN, the Layer 3 routing features are implemented as flow rules in Open vSwitch. This in turn may allow Layer 3 routing to also be offloaded to NICs with appropriate driver and firmware support.

Prerequisites¶

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or later
Linux kernel >= 5.15
Open vSwitch 2.17
OVN 22.03
OpenStack Yoga or later

Please refer to the Using SR-IOV with OVN page for information on kernel configuration.

Charm configuration¶

The below example bundle excerpt will enable hardware offloading for an OVN deployment.

applications:

  ovn-chassis:
    charm: ch:ovn-chassis
    channel: $CHANNEL_OVN
    options:
      enable-hardware-offload: true
      sriov-numvfs: "enp3s0f0:32 enp3s0f1:32"

  neutron-api:
    charm: ch:neutron-api
    channel: $CHANNEL_OPENSTACK
    options:
      enable-hardware-offload: true

  nova-compute:
    charm: ch:nova-compute
    channel: $CHANNEL_OPENSTACK
    options:
      pci-passthrough-whitelist: '{"address": "*:03:*", "physical_network": null}'

Caution

After deploying the above example, the machines hosting ovn-chassis units must be rebooted for the changes to take effect.

Boot an instance¶

OpenStack can now be directed to boot an instance and attach it to a hardware offloaded port.

First create a port with vnic-type ‘direct’ and binding-profile with ‘switchdev’ capabilities:

openstack port create --network my-network --vnic-type direct \
    --binding-profile '{"capabilities": ["switchdev"]}' direct_port1

Then create an instance connected to the newly created port:

openstack server create --flavor my-flavor --key-name my-key \
    --nic port-id=direct_port1 my-instance

Validate that traffic is offloaded¶

The traffic control monitor command can be used to observe updates to filters which is one of the mechanisms used to program the NIC switch hardware. Look for the ‘in_hw’ and ‘not_in_hw’ labels.

sudo tc monitor

replaced filter dev eth62 ingress protocol ip pref 3 flower chain 0 handle 0x9
  dst_mac fa:16:3e:b2:20:82
  src_mac fa:16:3e:b9:db:c8
  eth_type ipv4
  ip_proto tcp
  ip_tos 67deeb90
  dst_ip 10.42.0.17/28
  tcp_flags 22
  ip_flags nofrag
  in_hw
    action order 1: tunnel_key set
    src_ip 0.0.0.0
    dst_ip 10.6.12.8
    key_id 4
    dst_port 6081
    csum pipe
    index 15 ref 1 bind 1

    action order 2: mirred (Egress Redirect to device genev_sys_6081) stolen
    index 18 ref 1 bind 1
    cookie d4885b4d38419f7fd7ae77a11bc78b0b

Open vSwitch has a rich set of tools to monitor traffic flows and you can use the data path control tools to monitor offloaded flows.

sudo ovs-appctl dpctl/dump-flows type=offloaded

tunnel(tun_id=0x4,src=10.6.12.3,dst=10.6.12.7,tp_dst=6081,geneve({class=0x102,type=0x80,len=4,0x20007/0x7fffffff}),flags(+key)),recirc_id(0),in_port(2),eth(src=fa:16:3e:f8:52:5c,dst=00:00:00:00:00:00/01:00:00:00:00:00),eth_type(0x0800),ipv4(proto=6,frag=no),tcp_flags(psh|ack), packets:2, bytes:204, used:5.710s, actions:7
tunnel(tun_id=0x4,src=10.6.12.3,dst=10.6.12.7,tp_dst=6081,geneve({class=0x102,type=0x80,len=4,0x20007/0x7fffffff}),flags(+key)),recirc_id(0),in_port(2),eth(src=fa:16:3e:f8:52:5c,dst=00:00:00:00:00:00/01:00:00:00:00:00),eth_type(0x0800),ipv4(proto=6,frag=no),tcp_flags(ack), packets:3, bytes:230, used:5.710s, actions:7
tunnel(tun_id=0x4,src=10.6.12.8,dst=10.6.12.7,tp_dst=6081,geneve({class=0x102,type=0x80,len=4,0x60007/0x7fffffff}),flags(+key)),recirc_id(0),in_port(2),eth(src=fa:16:3e:b2:20:82,dst=00:00:00:00:00:00/01:00:00:00:00:00),eth_type(0x0800),ipv4(proto=6,frag=no),tcp_flags(syn|ack), packets:0, bytes:0, used:6.740s, actions:7
tunnel(tun_id=0x4,src=10.6.12.8,dst=10.6.12.7,tp_dst=6081,geneve({class=0x102,type=0x80,len=4,0x60007/0x7fffffff}),flags(+key)),recirc_id(0),in_port(2),eth(src=fa:16:3e:b2:20:82,dst=00:00:00:00:00:00/01:00:00:00:00:00),eth_type(0x0800),ipv4(proto=6,frag=no),tcp_flags(ack), packets:180737, bytes:9400154, used:0.000s, actions:7
recirc_id(0),in_port(6),eth(src=26:8a:07:82:a7:2f,dst=01:80:c2:00:00:0e),eth_type(0x88cc), packets:5, bytes:990, used:14.340s, actions:drop
recirc_id(0),in_port(7),eth(src=fa:16:3e:b9:db:c8,dst=fa:16:3e:b2:20:82),eth_type(0x0800),ipv4(dst=10.42.0.16/255.255.255.240,proto=6,tos=0/0x3,frag=no),tcp_flags(syn), packets:0, bytes:0, used:6.910s, actions:set(tunnel(tun_id=0x4,dst=10.6.12.8,ttl=64,tp_dst=6081,key6(bad key length 1, expected 0)(01)geneve({class=0x102,type=0x80,len=4,0x70006}),flags(key))),2
recirc_id(0),in_port(7),eth(src=fa:16:3e:b9:db:c8,dst=fa:16:3e:b2:20:82),eth_type(0x0800),ipv4(dst=10.42.0.16/255.255.255.240,proto=6,tos=0/0x3,frag=no),tcp_flags(ack), packets:935904, bytes:7504070178, used:0.590s, actions:set(tunnel(tun_id=0x4,dst=10.6.12.8,ttl=64,tp_dst=6081,key6(bad key length 1, expected 0)(01)geneve({class=0x102,type=0x80,len=4,0x70006}),flags(key))),2
recirc_id(0),in_port(7),eth(src=fa:16:3e:b9:db:c8,dst=fa:16:3e:b2:20:82),eth_type(0x0800),ipv4(dst=10.42.0.16/255.255.255.240,proto=6,tos=0/0x3,frag=no),tcp_flags(psh|ack), packets:3873, bytes:31053714, used:0.590s, actions:set(tunnel(tun_id=0x4,dst=10.6.12.8,ttl=64,tp_dst=6081,key6(bad key length 1, expected 0)(01)geneve({class=0x102,type=0x80,len=4,0x70006}),flags(key))),2

Implementing hardware offloading with OVN

Implementing hardware offloading with OVN¶

Prerequisites¶

Charm configuration¶

Boot an instance¶

Validate that traffic is offloaded¶

charm-guide 2023.2 - Bobcat

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