Open Stack

Hello all

At Wednesday's meeting I promised to supply specific examples to help 
illustrate the NFV use cases and also show how they map to some of the
blueprints.  Here's my first example - info on our session border
controller, which is a data plane app.  Please let me know if this is 
the sort of example and detail the group are looking for, then I can
add it into the wiki and send out info on the second, a vIMS core. 

Use case example
----------------

Perimeta Session Border Controller, Metaswitch Networks.  Sits on the
edge of a service provider's network and polices SIP and RTP (i.e. VoIP)
control and media traffic passing over the access network between 
end-users and the core network or the trunk network between the core and
another SP.  

Characteristics relevant to NFV/OpenStack
-----------------------------------------

Fast & guaranteed performance:
-	fast = performance of order of several million VoIP packets (~64-220
bytes depending on codec) per second per core (achievable on COTS hardware)
-	guaranteed via SLAs.

Fully HA, with no SPOFs and service continuity over software and hardware
failures.

Elastically scalable by adding/removing instances under the control of the
NFV orchestrator.

Ideally, ability to separate traffic from different customers via VLANs.

Requirements and mapping to blueprints
--------------------------------------

Fast & guaranteed performance - implications for network:

-	the packets per second target -> either SR-IOV or an accelerated
	DPDK-like data plane
	-	maps to the SR-IOV and accelerated vSwitch blueprints:
		-	"SR-IOV Networking Support" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/pci-passthrough-sriov)
		-	"Open vSwitch to use patch ports" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/neutron/+spec/openvswitch-patch-port-use)
		-	"userspace vhost in ovd vif bindings" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/libvirt-ovs-use-usvhost)
		-	"Snabb NFV driver" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/neutron/+spec/snabb-nfv-mech-driver)
		-	"VIF_SNABB" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/vif-snabb)

Fast & guaranteed performance - implications for compute:

-	to optimize data rate we need to keep all working data in L3 cache
	-> need to be able to pin cores
	-	"Virt driver pinning guest vCPUs to host pCPUs" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/virt-driver-cpu-pinning)

-	similarly to optimize data rate need to bind to NIC on host CPU's bus
	-	"I/O (PCIe) Based NUMA Scheduling" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/input-output-based-numa-scheduling)

-	to offer guaranteed performance as opposed to 'best efforts' we need
	to control placement of cores, minimise TLB misses and get accurate 
	info about core topology (threads vs. hyperthreads etc.); maps to the
	remaining blueprints on NUMA & vCPU topology:
	-	"Virt driver guest vCPU topology configuration" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/virt-driver-vcpu-topology)
	-	"Virt driver guest NUMA node placement & topology" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/virt-driver-numa-placement)
	-	"Virt driver large page allocation for guest RAM" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/virt-driver-large-pages)

-	may need support to prevent 'noisy neighbours' stealing L3 cache -
	unproven, and no blueprint we're aware of.

HA:
-	requires anti-affinity rules to prevent active/passive being
	instantiated on same host - already supported, so no gap.

Elastic scaling:
-	similarly readily achievable using existing features - no gap.

VLAN trunking:
-	maps straightforwardly to "VLAN trunking networks for NFV" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/neutron/+spec/nfv-vlan-trunks et al).

Other:
-	being able to offer apparent traffic separation (e.g. service
	traffic vs. application management) over single network is also
	useful in some cases
	-	"Support two interfaces from one VM attached to the same network" (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/2-if-1-net)

regards

Calum


Calum Loudon 
Director, Architecture
+44 (0)208 366 1177
 
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