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Chapter 2. Hardware requirements

This section describes the hardware details necessary for NFV.

You can use Red Hat Technologies Ecosystem to check for a list of certified hardware, software, cloud provider, component by choosing the category and then selecting the product version.

For a complete list of the certified hardware for Red Hat OpenStack Platform, see Red Hat OpenStack Platform certified hardware.

2.1. Network Adapter support

For a list of tested NICs for NFV, log in to the Network Adapter Support page of the Customer Portal.

If you configure OVS-DPDK on Mellanox ConnectX-4 or ConnectX-5 network interfaces, you must set the corresponding kernel driver in the compute-ovs-dpdk.yaml file:

members:
  - type: ovs_dpdk_port
     name: dpdk0
     driver: mlx5_core
     members:
     - type: interface
       name: enp3s0f0

2.2. Discovering your NUMA node topology

When you plan your deployment, you must understand the NUMA topology of your Compute node so that you can partition the CPU and memory resources for optimum performance. To determine the NUMA information, you can choose one of the following options:

  • Enable hardware introspection to retrieve NUMA information from bare-metal nodes.
  • Log in to each bare-metal node to manually collect the information.
Note

You must install and configure the undercloud before you can retrieve NUMA information through hardware introspection. For more information, see the Director Installation and Usage guide.

Retrieving Hardware Introspection Details

The Bare Metal service hardware inspection extras (inspection_extras) is enabled by default to retrieve hardware details. You can use these hardware details to configure your overcloud. For more information about the inspection_extras parameter in the undercloud.conf file, see Configuring the Director in the Director Installation and Usage guide.

For example, the numa_topology collector is part of these hardware inspection extras and includes the following information for each NUMA node:

  • RAM (in kilobytes)
  • Physical CPU cores and their sibling threads
  • NICs associated with the NUMA node

Use the openstack baremetal introspection data save _UUID_ | jq .numa_topology command to retrieve this information, with the UUID of the bare-metal node.

The following example shows the retrieved NUMA information for a bare-metal node:

{
  "cpus": [
    {
      "cpu": 1,
      "thread_siblings": [
        1,
        17
      ],
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "cpu": 2,
      "thread_siblings": [
        10,
        26
      ],
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "cpu": 0,
      "thread_siblings": [
        0,
        16
      ],
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "cpu": 5,
      "thread_siblings": [
        13,
        29
      ],
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "cpu": 7,
      "thread_siblings": [
        15,
        31
      ],
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "cpu": 7,
      "thread_siblings": [
        7,
        23
      ],
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "cpu": 1,
      "thread_siblings": [
        9,
        25
      ],
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "cpu": 6,
      "thread_siblings": [
        6,
        22
      ],
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "cpu": 3,
      "thread_siblings": [
        11,
        27
      ],
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "cpu": 5,
      "thread_siblings": [
        5,
        21
      ],
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "cpu": 4,
      "thread_siblings": [
        12,
        28
      ],
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "cpu": 4,
      "thread_siblings": [
        4,
        20
      ],
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "cpu": 0,
      "thread_siblings": [
        8,
        24
      ],
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "cpu": 6,
      "thread_siblings": [
        14,
        30
      ],
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "cpu": 3,
      "thread_siblings": [
        3,
        19
      ],
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "cpu": 2,
      "thread_siblings": [
        2,
        18
      ],
      "numa_node": 0
    }
  ],
  "ram": [
    {
      "size_kb": 66980172,
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "size_kb": 67108864,
      "numa_node": 1
    }
  ],
  "nics": [
    {
      "name": "ens3f1",
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "name": "ens3f0",
      "numa_node": 1
    },
    {
      "name": "ens2f0",
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "name": "ens2f1",
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "name": "ens1f1",
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "name": "ens1f0",
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "name": "eno4",
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "name": "eno1",
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "name": "eno3",
      "numa_node": 0
    },
    {
      "name": "eno2",
      "numa_node": 0
    }
  ]
}

2.3. Review BIOS Settings

The following listing describes the required BIOS settings for NFV:

  • C3 Power State: Disabled.
  • C6 Power State: Disabled.
  • MLC Streamer: Enabled.
  • MLC Spacial Prefetcher: Enabled.
  • DCU Data Prefetcher: Enabled.
  • DCA: Enabled.
  • CPU Power and Performance: Performance.
  • Memory RAS and Performance Config → NUMA Optimized: Enabled.
  • Turbo Boost: Disabled.
  • VT-d: Enabled for Intel cards if VFIO functionality is needed.

2.4. Network Adapter Fast Datapath Feature Support Matrix

For a list of supported versions of FDP, log in to the Overview of Fast Datapath page of the Customer Portal.