Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)

The nova-compute charm (in conjunction with the nova-cloud-controller and neutron-api charms) supports compute nodes configured for the use in Telco NFV deployments, specifically the following configuration options (YAML excerpt):

nova-compute:
  hugepages: 60%
  vcpu-pin-set: "^0,^2"
  reserved-host-memory: 1024
  pci-passthrough-whitelist: {"vendor_id":"1137","product_id":"0071","address":"*:0a:00.*","physical_network":"physnet1"}

In this example, compute nodes will be configured with 60% of available RAM for hugepage use (decreasing memory fragmentation in virtual machines, improving performance), and Nova will be configured to reserve CPU cores 0 and 2 and 1024M of RAM for host usage and use the supplied PCI device whitelist as PCI devices that as consumable by virtual machines, including any mapping to underlying provider network names (used for SR-IOV VF/PF port scheduling with Nova and Neutron’s SR-IOV support).

The vcpu-pin-set configuration option is a comma-separated list of physical CPU numbers that virtual CPUs can be allocated to by default. Each element should be either a single CPU number, a range of CPU numbers, or a caret followed by a CPU number to be excluded from a previous range. For example:

vcpu-pin-set: "4-12,^8,15"

The pci-passthrough-whitelist configuration must be specified as follows:

A JSON dictionary which describe a whitelisted PCI device. It should take the following format:

["device_id": "<id>",] ["product_id": "<id>",]
["address": "[[[[<domain>]:]<bus>]:][<slot>][.[<function>]]" |
"devname": "PCI Device Name",]
{"tag": "<tag_value>",}

Where ‘[’ indicates zero or one occurrences, ‘{’ indicates zero or multiple occurrences, and ‘|’ mutually exclusive options. Note that any missing fields are automatically wildcarded. Valid examples are:

pci-passthrough-whitelist: {"devname":"eth0", "physical_network":"physnet"}

pci-passthrough-whitelist: {"address":"*:0a:00.*"}

pci-passthrough-whitelist: {"address":":0a:00.", "physical_network":"physnet1"}

pci-passthrough-whitelist: {"vendor_id":"1137", "product_id":"0071"}

pci-passthrough-whitelist: {"vendor_id":"1137", "product_id":"0071", "address": "0000:0a:00.1", "physical_network":"physnet1"}

The following is invalid, as it specifies mutually exclusive options:

pci-passthrough-whitelist: {"devname":"eth0", "physical_network":"physnet", "address":"*:0a:00.*"}

A JSON list of JSON dictionaries corresponding to the above format. For example:

pci-passthrough-whitelist: [{"product_id":"0001", "vendor_id":"8086"}, {"product_id":"0002", "vendor_id":"8086"}]

The OpenStack advanced networking documentation provides further details on whitelist configuration and how to create instances with Neutron ports wired to SR-IOV devices.