[dpdk-dev] Poor SRIOV performance with ESXi Linux guest

[Ale Mansoor <mansooraa@hotmail.com>]

 Getting less than 100 packets per second throughput between VF's under my Fedora FC20 VM running under ESXi 6.0 with DPDK l2fwd (Used as ./l2fwd -c 0xf -n 4 -- -p 0x3 -T 1)
 
Questions:
---------------
 
Q1) Is DPDK + SRIOV under ESXi supposed to use the igb_uio driver or the vfio-pci driver inside Linux guest os ?
Q2) What is the expected l2fwd performance when running DPDK under the Linux guest OS under ESXI with SRIOV ?
Q3) Any idea what may be preventing vfio-pci driver from binding to the VF's inside the guest instance ?
Q4) Why is igb_uio performing so poorly ?
 
 
 
My hardware setup:
---------------------------
HP DL380-G8 host with dual Xeon-2670 CPU
64 GB RAM
Intel 82599 NIC connected to 10G switch
HP onboard bnx2 NIC's.
 
VMware Hypervisor ESXi 6.0:
---------------------------------------
On above hardware running ESXi 6.0 hypervisor and Intel ixgbe VMware (driver version: 3.21.4.3iov). 
 
ESXi side SRIOV is setup as follows: "ixgbe_enabled = 1 options = max_vfs=0,8,8,0"
(Total 16 VF's configured)
 
VF's are pass-through to the two guest instances. 
 
First 4 VF's to one vm instance and next 2 VF's to second vm instance, remaining VF's are unused, have also tried with single guest instances having 4 VF's and remaining unused, but it did not make any difference
 
 
My VMware guest instances:
----------------------------------------
 
Have tried two different guests:
 
Linux guest setup each with 8 cores and 8GB memory (memory is setup as locked down to vm to help with iommu).
 
 
1) Fedora FC20 OS (Linux kernel 3.19.8-100.fc20) 
2) Ubuntu 15.04 Server distro (Linux kernel 3.19.0-15),
 
On both these guests systems my Linux kernel boot line is set with "intel_iommu=on and iommu=pt"
 
My kernel command info for Fedora guest is as follows:
 
 
$cat /proc/cmdline
---------------------------
BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.19.8-100.fc20.x86_64 root=UUID=f0cde7fc-d835-4d90-b086-82bf88f58f88 ro console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600 rhgb quiet net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0 intel_iommu=on iommu=pt
 
My dmesg has message:
 
"Intel-IOMMU: enabled"
 
Kernel IOMMU config:
------------------------------
 
 cat /boot/config-3.19.8-100.fc20.x86_64 |grep -i iommu
# CONFIG_GART_IOMMU is not set
# CONFIG_CALGARY_IOMMU is not set
CONFIG_IOMMU_HELPER=y
CONFIG_VFIO_IOMMU_TYPE1=m
CONFIG_IOMMU_API=y
CONFIG_IOMMU_SUPPORT=y
CONFIG_AMD_IOMMU=y
CONFIG_AMD_IOMMU_STATS=y
CONFIG_AMD_IOMMU_V2=m
CONFIG_INTEL_IOMMU=y
# CONFIG_INTEL_IOMMU_DEFAULT_ON is not set
CONFIG_INTEL_IOMMU_FLOPPY_WA=y
# CONFIG_IOMMU_STRESS is not set
 
 cat /boot/config-3.19.8-100.fc20.x86_64 |grep -i VIRTUAL
CONFIG_FB_VIRTUAL=m
# CONFIG_DEBUG_VIRTUAL is not set
CONFIG_VIRTUALIZATION=y


 
 ./dpdk_nic_bind.py --status
----------------------------------------
Network devices using DPDK-compatible driver
============================================
0000:03:00.0 '82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function' drv=igb_uio unused=ixgbevf,vfio-pci
0000:0b:00.0 '82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function' drv=igb_uio unused=ixgbevf,vfio-pci
0000:13:00.0 '82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function' drv=igb_uio unused=ixgbevf,vfio-pci
0000:1b:00.0 '82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function' drv=igb_uio unused=ixgbevf,vfio-pci
Network devices using kernel driver
===================================
0000:02:00.0 '82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)' if=eth4 drv=e1000 unused=igb_uio,vfio-pci *Active*
Other network devices
=====================
<none>
 
The l2fw program is run with:   ./l2fwd -c 0xf -n 4 -- -p 0x3 -T 1
 
[Using the default igb_uio driver shipped with Fedora Fc20]
 
Getting around 70 packets per second with these settings:
 
When I tried using the vfio-pci driver (again using the default vfio-pci driver from Fedora FC20), get the following errors:
 
./dpdk_nic_bind.py --bind vfio-pci 0000:03:00.0
Error: bind failed for 0000:03:00.0 - Cannot bind to driver vfio-pci
 
dmesg shows:
[  882.685134] vfio-pci: probe of 0000:03:00.0 failed with error -22
 
My guest side lspci shows: 
-----------------------------------
 
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
0b:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
13:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
1b:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function (rev 01)
 
My ESXi side VMware lscpi shows:
----------------------------------------------
 
0000:09:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 10 Gigabit Dual Port Network Connection [vmnic4]
0000:09:00.1 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 10 Gigabit Dual Port Network Connection [vmnic5]
0000:09:10.1 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.9.1_VF_0]
0000:09:10.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.9.1_VF_1]
0000:09:10.5 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.9.1_VF_2]
0000:09:10.7 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.9.1_VF_3]
0000:09:11.1 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.9.1_VF_4]
0000:09:11.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.9.1_VF_5]
0000:09:11.5 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.9.1_VF_6]
0000:09:11.7 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.9.1_VF_7]
0000:0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 10 Gigabit Dual Port Network Connection [vmnic6]
0000:0c:00.1 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 10 Gigabit Dual Port Network Connection [vmnic7]
0000:0c:10.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.12.0_VF_0]
0000:0c:10.2 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.12.0_VF_1]
0000:0c:10.4 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.12.0_VF_2]
0000:0c:10.6 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.12.0_VF_3]
0000:0c:11.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.12.0_VF_4]
0000:0c:11.2 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.12.0_VF_5]
0000:0c:11.4 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.12.0_VF_6]
0000:0c:11.6 Network controller: Intel Corporation 82599 Ethernet Controller Virtual Function [PF_0.12.0_VF_7]
 
---
Regards
 
Ale