Hi,

I am using DPDK version 22.11 for performance evaluation running PRoX on an Openshift Cluster where I have created two pods – I am sending traffic from one and receiving on the other and I’ve found that I’m unable to utilize more than 6GB of bandwidth in the server at the packet generation level. I have tested with a 64-byte frame size and achieved a maximum of 6.99 MPPS.

I’ve attempted to address this issue by adhering to the recommendations outlined in the DPDK 22.11 NVIDIA Mellanox NIC performance report available at https://fast.dpdk.org/doc/perf/DPDK_22_11_NVIDIA_Mellanox_NIC_performance_report.pdf . However, the problem persists.

Additionally, I’ve investigated packet loss at the NIC interface level and found no anomalies. The bottleneck appears to be related to packet generation, but I’m uncertain about the underlying cause.

I am very new to DPDK so don’t really know how to debug this issue. I believe there is something happening between the NIC layer and Openshift.

Additionally, I used the same hardware running kubeadm where I was using the same DPDK and PRoX version with a similar setup and was able to achieve much better performance(at least for the packet generation part – where my current bottleneck occurs).

Can someone point me in the right direction?

I would be happy to provide any other required information

Below are the SUT details:

Nic Model: Ethernet controller: Mellanox Technologies MT2892 Family [ConnectX-6 Dx]

uname -r
5.14.0-284.54.1.rt14.339.el9_2.x86_64
 
ethtool -i enp216s0f0np0
driver: mlx5_core
version: 5.14.0-284.54.1.rt14.339.el9_2.
firmware-version: 22.35.2000 (MT_0000000359)
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:d8:00.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: yes
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: yes
 
## CPU
Architecture: x86_64
 CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
 Address sizes: 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
 Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 104
 On-line CPU(s) list: 0-103
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
 BIOS Vendor ID: Intel
 Model name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6230R CPU @ 2.10GHz
 BIOS Model name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6230R CPU @ 2.10GHz

Operating System:

cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS"
ID="rhcos"
ID_LIKE="rhel fedora"
VERSION="415.92.202402201450-0"
VERSION_ID="4.15"
VARIANT="CoreOS"
VARIANT_ID=coreos
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el9"
PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS 415.92.202402201450-0 (Plow)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;31"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:9::coreos"
HOME_URL="https://www.redhat.com/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.openshift.com/container-platform/4.15/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="OpenShift Container Platform"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION="4.15"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="OpenShift Container Platform"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="4.15"
OPENSHIFT_VERSION="4.15"
RHEL_VERSION="9.2"
OSTREE_VERSION="415.92.202402201450-0"

OCP Cluster

oc version
Client Version: 4.15.0-202402070507.p0.g48dcf59.assembly.stream-48dcf59
Kustomize Version: v5.0.4-0.20230601165947-6ce0bf390ce3