dpdk l2fwd performance issue in VM

dpdk l2fwd performance issue in VM

[Illayaraja M]

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Hi All,

I'm trying to deploy a l2fwd application on VMs to test it.
I have a 1Gbps link speed NIC, when I run a simple l2fwd application able
to achieve 1gbps traffic without any loss of packet. I have modified the
l2fwd application a bit.
I have two l2fwd applications namely P1 and P2. P1 receives the external
traffic and sends it to P2 and P2 simply changes the mac address and sends
it back to P1. Finally P1 sends the packet out to the external network.
With the above setup I'm able to achieve only 330Mbps traffic without
packet loss.

I'm trying to understand how the internal communication happens between the
P1 and P2 process, does it use PCI bus for communication?
Why is there a drop in tps and observe packet loss?

The setup details are given below.

The minimum hardware requirements to use UPF are as follows:

Hardware

Requirement Details

Machine Type

Virtual Machine

Host Kernel

3.10.0-1160.el7.x86_64

CPU Architecture

(Important)

x86_64 should support Intel SSE, VT-x, AVX

At least Intel Skylake or later gen

Host OS

Centos

Host Interfaces

At least 3 Physical Interfaces

VM Manager

QEMU/KVM minimum V 2.2.1

VM OS

CentOS Linux release 7.9 (Core)

VM Configuration

Minimum Memory 8 GB

Minimum 8 core CPUs

Minimum 10 GB disk space

Network Interfaces

(5 e1000e Interfaces including the Management interface)

Network Source

Name

Mode

Host Device

(Management)

Interface-1

Bridge


Host Device

Interface-2

Bridge

Interface-3

Bridge

Interface-4

Bridge

Interface-5

Bridge

Virtual Network(open Network)

Interface-6

Open

Interface-7

Open

Interface-8

Open

Can you please suggest the best recommended drivers and internal network.

Regards,
illaya

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Re: dpdk l2fwd performance issue in VM

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2022 11:17:48 +0530
Illayaraja M <illayaraj02@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have two l2fwd applications namely P1 and P2. P1 receives the external
> traffic and sends it to P2 and P2 simply changes the mac address and sends
> it back to P1. Finally P1 sends the packet out to the external network.
> With the above setup I'm able to achieve only 330Mbps traffic without
> packet loss.

Is the VM running with dedicated CPU's?
Each application running with dedicated virtual CPU's?
Which hypervisor?
Which virtual NIC/

Sending packets between applications always causes one or more cache misses.
And the memory bandwidth can be a limiting factor.