VMware Telco Cloud Automation configurations to support Enhanced Data Path or ENS.

Enhanced data path or ENS provides superior network performance. It targets NFV workload and uses the DPDK capabilities to enhance the network performance. To support ENS on VMware Telco Cloud Automation, make the following changes in the Infrastructure Requirements Designer.

Prerequisites

  • Ensure that all the hosts in the cluster are homogeneous.
  • Install latest ENS NIC drivers compatible with NIC Model and remove the older drivers. For details, see Enhanced Data Path.
  • Ensure that you create a new DVS for ENS workloads and prepare the DVS with NSX-T ENS.
  • If you want to use multiple NICs as Uplinks in NSX-T, VMware Telco Cloud Automation recommends to set the NIC Teaming policy to Load Balance Source.
Note:
  • When you create DVS for ENS, all connected Portgroups or NSX-T segments start leveraging Enhanced Datapath.
  • VMware Telco Cloud Automation does not recommend the use of ENS DVS for VMotion and vSAN traffic.

Procedure

  1. Do not set isNumaConfigNeeded in CSAR as NSX-T can automatically aligns the VNIC of Node Pool with NUMA, PNIC, and ENS L-cores. However if you set isNumaConfigNeeded = True in CSAR, then VMware Telco Cloud Automation tries to align the Node Pool with NUMA and ENS L-cores. 
    infra_requirements:
  node_components:

    latency_sensitivity: high        
    isNumaConfigNeeded: [true | false]   <---- if True, TCA will send only memory pinning to VMConfig operator if underlying network ENS enabled.
  2. Set the CTX value. 
    infra_requirements:
  node_components:
    network:
      devices:
        - deviceType: vmxnet3                      <-- vmxnet3
          networkName: F1U
          resourceName: vmxnet3res                 <-- resourceName
          targetDriver: [igb_uio | vfio-pci]       <-- driver name
          additionalProperties:                    <-- ENS related config i.e.., Setting multi context for device
            ctxPerDev: [1|2|3]
                   
Note:
    i. If ‘targetDriver’ is not provided, then providing interfaceName for the device is mandatory.
    ii. If ctxPerDev is set, map the device to ENS capable network while instantiating CNF.
    iii. ctxPerDev property is applied per interface level to the Node pool and can be seen in VM vmx file as ethernetX.ctxPerDev (where X is the interface number).
  3. Set Key-Value List to enable Receive Side Scaling function 
    infra_requirements:  
   node_components:    
      network:      
        devices:        
           - deviceType: vmxnet3                <- vmxnet3 
          
             networkName: F1U          
             resourceName: vmxnet3res           <--  
                                                resourceName   
                                                  
             targetDriver: [igb_uio | vfio-pci]     <--   
                                                  driver name  
                                                          
          additionalProperties:                               
               ethernetArgs:            <-- ENS   
                                        related config 
                                        i.e.., Setting multi    
                                        context for device               
               ctxPerDev: 3              
               pnicFeatures: 4              
               rssOffload: true              
               udpRss: 1

Note:    
i. If ‘targetDriver’ is not provided, then providing interface Name for the device is mandatory.    
ii. If ctxPerDev/pnicFeatures/rssOffload/udpRss are set, map the device to ENS capable network while instantiating CNF.    
iii. ctxPerDev/pnicFeatures/rssOffload/udpRss properties are applied per interface level to the Node pool and can be seen in VM vmx file as ethernetX.ctxPerDev/ethernetX.pnicFeatures/
ethernetX.rssOffload/ethernetX.udpRss 
(where X is the interfacenumber).