Chapter 3. Requirements for NFV This section describes the requirements for network functions virtualization (NFV) in a Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environment. Red Hat certifies hardware for use with RHOSO. For more information, see Certified hardware . 3.1. Tested NICs for NFV For a list of tested NICs for NFV, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase solution Network Adapter Fast Datapath Feature Support Matrix . Use the default driver for the supported NIC, unless you are configuring NVIDIA (Mellanox) network interfaces. For NVIDIA network interfaces, you must specify the kernel driver during configuration. Example In this example, an OVS-DPDK port is being configured. Because the NIC being used is an NVIDIA ConnectX-5, the driver must be specified: 3.2. Discovering your NUMA node topology For network functions virtualization (NFV) on Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environments, you must understand the NUMA topology of your Compute node to partition the CPU and memory resources for optimum performance. To determine the NUMA information, perform one of the following tasks: Enable hardware introspection to retrieve this information from bare-metal nodes. Log on to each bare-metal node to manually collect the information. Additional resources Bare metal configuration in the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (RHOCP) Postinstallation configuration guide. 3.3. NFV BIOS settings The following table describes the required BIOS settings for network functions virtualization (NFV) on Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environments: Note You must enable SR-IOV global and NIC settings in the BIOS, or your RHOSO deployment with SR-IOV Compute nodes will fail. Table 3.1. BIOS Settings Parameter Setting C3 Power State Disabled. C6 Power State Disabled. MLC Streamer Enabled. MLC Spatial Prefetcher Enabled. DCU Data Prefetcher Enabled. DCA Enabled. CPU Power and Performance Performance. Memory RAS and Performance Config NUMA Optimized Enabled. Turbo Boost Disabled in NFV deployments that require deterministic performance. Enabled in all other scenarios. VT-d Enabled for Intel cards if VFIO functionality is needed. NUMA memory interleave Disabled. On processors that use the intel_idle driver, Red Hat Enterprise Linux can ignore BIOS settings and re-enable the processor C-state. You can disable intel_idle and instead use the acpi_idle driver by specifying the key-value pair intel_idle.max_cstate=0 on the kernel boot command line. Confirm that the processor is using the acpi_idle driver by checking the contents of current_driver : Sample output Note You will experience some latency after changing drivers, because it takes time for the Tuned daemon to start. However, after Tuned loads, the processor does not use the deeper C-state. 3.4. Supported drivers for NFV For a complete list of supported drivers for network functions virtualization (NFV) on Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environments, see Component, Plug-In, and Driver Support in Red Hat OpenStack Platform . For a list of NICs tested for NFV on RHOSO environments, see Tested NICs for NFV .

Commands:
members - type: ovs_dpdk_port name: dpdk0 driver: mlx5_core members: - type: interface name: enp3s0f0
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuidle/current_driver
acpi_idle