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About Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) hardware networks

The Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) specification is a standard for a type of PCI device assignment that can share a single device with multiple pods.

SR-IOV enables you to segment a compliant network device, recognized on the host node as a physical function (PF), into multiple virtual functions (VFs). The VF is used like any other network device. The SR-IOV device driver for the device determines how the VF is exposed in the container:

  • netdevice driver: A regular kernel network device in the netns of the container

  • vfio-pci driver: A character device mounted in the container

You can use SR-IOV network devices with additional networks on your OpenShift Container Platform cluster for application that require high bandwidth or low latency.

Components that manage SR-IOV network devices

The SR-IOV Network Operator creates and manages the components of the SR-IOV stack. It performs the following functions:

  • Orchestrates discovery and management of SR-IOV network devices

  • Generates NetworkAttachmentDefinition custom resources for the SR-IOV Container Network Interface (CNI)

  • Creates and updates the configuration of the SR-IOV network device plug-in

  • Creates node specific SriovNetworkNodeState custom resources

  • Updates the spec.interfaces field in each SriovNetworkNodeState custom resource

The Operator provisions the following components:

SR-IOV network configuration daemon

A DaemonSet that is deployed on worker nodes when the SR-IOV Operator starts. The daemon is responsible for discovering and initializing SR-IOV network devices in the cluster.

SR-IOV Operator webhook

A dynamic admission controller webhook that validates the Operator custom resource and sets appropriate default values for unset fields.

SR-IOV Network resources injector

A dynamic admission controller webhook that provides functionality for patching Kubernetes Pod specifications with requests and limits for custom network resources such as SR-IOV VFs.

SR-IOV network device plug-in

A device plug-in that discovers, advertises, and allocates SR-IOV network virtual function (VF) resources. Device plug-ins are used in Kubernetes to enable the use of limited resources, typically in physical devices. Device plug-ins give the Kubernetes scheduler awareness of resource availability, so that the scheduler can schedule Pods on nodes with sufficient resources.

SR-IOV CNI plug-in

A CNI plug-in that attaches VF interfaces allocated from the SR-IOV device plug-in directly into a Pod.

The SR-IOV Network resources injector and SR-IOV Network Operator webhook are enabled by default and can be disabled by editing the default SriovOperatorConfig CR.

Supported devices

OpenShift Container Platform supports the following Network Interface Card (NIC) models:

  • Intel XXV710-DA2 25G card with vendor ID 0x8086 and device ID 0x158b

  • Mellanox MT27710 Family [ConnectX-4 Lx] 25G card with vendor ID 0x15b3 and device ID 0x1015

  • Mellanox MT27800 Family [ConnectX-5] 100G card with vendor ID 0x15b3 and device ID 0x1017

Example use of a virtual function in a Pod

You can run a remote direct memory access (RDMA) or a Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) application in a Pod with SR-IOV VF attached.

This example shows a Pod using a virtual function (VF) in RDMA mode:

Pod spec that uses RDMA mode
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: rdma-app
  annotations:
    k8s.v1.cni.cncf.io/networks: sriov-rdma-mlnx
spec:
  containers:
  - name: testpmd
    image: <RDMA_image>
    imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
    securityContext:
     capabilities:
        add: ["IPC_LOCK"]
    command: ["sleep", "infinity"]

The following example shows a Pod with a VF in DPDK mode:

Pod spec that uses DPDK mode
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: dpdk-app
  annotations:
    k8s.v1.cni.cncf.io/networks: sriov-dpdk-net
spec:
  containers:
  - name: testpmd
    image: <DPDK_image>
    securityContext:
     capabilities:
        add: ["IPC_LOCK"]
    volumeMounts:
    - mountPath: /dev/hugepages
      name: hugepage
    resources:
      limits:
        memory: "1Gi"
        cpu: "2"
        hugepages-1Gi: "4Gi"
      requests:
        memory: "1Gi"
        cpu: "2"
        hugepages-1Gi: "4Gi"
    command: ["sleep", "infinity"]
  volumes:
  - name: hugepage
    emptyDir:
      medium: HugePages

An optional library is available to aid the application running in a container in gathering network information associated with a pod. This library is called 'app-netutil'. See the library’s source code in the app-netutil GitHub repo.

This library is intended to ease the integration of the SR-IOV VFs in DPDK mode into the container. The library provides both a GO API and a C API, as well as examples of using both languages.

There is also a sample Docker image, 'dpdk-app-centos', which can run one of the following DPDK sample applications based on an environmental variable in the pod-spec: l2fwd, l3wd or testpmd. This Docker image provides an example of integrating the 'app-netutil' into the container image itself. The library can also integrate into an init-container which collects the desired data and passes the data to an existing DPDK workload.

Next steps