4 .. _tested_physical_topologies:
6 Tested Physical Topologies
7 --------------------------
9 CSIT VPP performance tests are executed on physical baremetal servers hosted by
10 :abbr:`LF (Linux Foundation)` FD.io project. Testbed physical topology is shown
11 in the figure below.::
13 +------------------------+ +------------------------+
15 | +------------------+ | | +------------------+ |
17 | | <-----------------> | |
18 | | DUT1 | | | | DUT2 | |
19 | +--^---------------+ | | +---------------^--+ |
22 +------------------------+ +------------------^-----+
27 +------------------> TG <------------------+
31 SUT1 and SUT2 are two System Under Test servers (Cisco UCS C240, each with two
32 Intel XEON CPUs), TG is a Traffic Generator (TG, another Cisco UCS C240, with
33 two Intel XEON CPUs). SUTs run VPP SW application in Linux user-mode as a
34 Device Under Test (DUT). TG runs TRex SW application as a packet Traffic
35 Generator. Physical connectivity between SUTs and to TG is provided using
36 different NIC models that need to be tested for performance. Currently
37 installed and tested NIC models include:
39 #. 2port10GE X520-DA2 Intel.
40 #. 2port10GE X710 Intel.
41 #. 2port10GE VIC1227 Cisco.
42 #. 2port40GE VIC1385 Cisco.
43 #. 2port40GE XL710 Intel.
45 From SUT and DUT perspective, all performance tests involve forwarding packets
46 between two physical Ethernet ports (10GE or 40GE). Due to the number of
47 listed NIC models tested and available PCI slot capacity in SUT servers, in
48 all of the above cases both physical ports are located on the same NIC. In
49 some test cases this results in measured packet throughput being limited not
50 by VPP DUT but by either the physical interface or the NIC capacity.
52 Going forward CSIT project will be looking to add more hardware into FD.io
53 performance labs to address larger scale multi-interface and multi-NIC
54 performance testing scenarios.
56 For service chain topology test cases that require DUT (VPP) to communicate with
57 VirtualMachines (VMs) or with Linux/Docker Containers (Ctrs) over
58 vhost-user/memif interfaces, N of VM/Ctr instances are created on SUT1
59 and SUT2. Three types of service chain topologies are tested in CSIT |release|:
61 #. "Parallel" topology with packets flowing from NIC via DUT (VPP) to
62 VM/Container and back to VPP and NIC;
64 #. "Chained" topology (a.k.a. "Snake") with packets flowing via DUT (VPP) to
65 VM/Container, back to DUT, then to the next VM/Container, back to DUT and
66 so on until the last VM/Container in a chain, then back to DUT and NIC;
68 #. "Horizontal" topology with packets flowing via DUT (VPP) to Container,
69 then via "horizontal" memif to the next Container, and so on until the
70 last Container, then back to DUT and NIC. "Horizontal" topology is not
73 For each of the above topologies, DUT (VPP) is tested in a range of L2
74 or IPv4/IPv6 configurations depending on the test suite. A sample DUT
75 "Chained" service topology with N of VM/Ctr instances is shown in the
76 figure below. Packet flow thru the DUTs and VMs/Ctrs is marked with
79 +-------------------------+ +-------------------------+
80 | +---------+ +---------+ | | +---------+ +---------+ |
81 | |VM/Ctr[1]| |VM/Ctr[N]| | | |VM/Ctr[1]| |VM/Ctr[N]| |
82 | | ***** | | ***** | | | | ***** | | ***** | |
83 | +--^---^--+ +--^---^--+ | | +--^---^--+ +--^---^--+ |
84 | *| |* *| |* | | *| |* *| |* |
85 | +--v---v-------v---v--+ | | +--v---v-------v---v--+ |
86 | | * * * * |*|***********|*| * * * * | |
87 | | * ********* ***<-|-----------|->*** ********* * | |
88 | | * DUT1 | | | | DUT2 * | |
89 | +--^------------------+ | | +------------------^--+ |
91 | *| SUT1 | | SUT2 |* |
92 +-------------------------+ +-------------------------+
97 *+--------------------> TG <--------------------+*
98 **********************| |**********************
101 In above "Chained" topology, packets are switched by DUT multiple times:
102 twice for a single VM/Ctr, three times for two VMs/Ctrs, N+1 times for N
103 VMs/Ctrs. Hence the external throughput rates measured by TG and listed
104 in this report must be multiplied by (N+1) to represent the actual DUT
105 aggregate packet forwarding rate.
107 For a "Parallel" and "Horizontal" service topologies packets are always
108 switched by DUT twice per service chain.
110 Note that reported DUT (VPP) performance results are specific to the SUTs
111 tested. Current :abbr:`LF (Linux Foundation)` FD.io SUTs are based on Intel
112 XEON E5-2699v3 2.3GHz CPUs. SUTs with other CPUs are likely to yield different
113 results. A good rule of thumb, that can be applied to estimate VPP packet
114 thoughput for Phy-to-Phy (NIC-to-NIC, PCI-to-PCI) topology, is to expect
115 the forwarding performance to be proportional to CPU core frequency,
116 assuming CPU is the only limiting factor and all other SUT parameters
117 equivalent to FD.io CSIT environment. The same rule of thumb can be also
118 applied for Phy-to-VM/Ctr-to-Phy (NIC-to-VM/Ctr-to-NIC) topology, but due to
119 much higher dependency on intensive memory operations and sensitivity to Linux
120 kernel scheduler settings and behaviour, this estimation may not always yield
121 good enough accuracy.
123 For detailed FD.io CSIT testbed specification and topology, as well as
124 configuration and setup of SUTs and DUTs testbeds please refer to
125 :ref:`test_environment`.
127 Similar SUT compute node can be arrived to in a standalone VPP setup by using a
128 `vpp-config configuration tool
129 <https://wiki.fd.io/view/VPP/Configuration_Tool>`_ developed within the
130 VPP project using CSIT recommended settings and scripts.
132 Performance Tests Coverage
133 --------------------------
135 Performance tests are split into two main categories:
137 - Throughput discovery - discovery of packet forwarding rate using binary search
138 in accordance to :rfc:`2544`.
140 - NDR - discovery of Non Drop Rate packet throughput, at zero packet loss;
141 followed by one-way packet latency measurements at 10%, 50% and 100% of
142 discovered NDR throughput.
143 - PDR - discovery of Partial Drop Rate, with specified non-zero packet loss
144 currently set to 0.5%; followed by one-way packet latency measurements at
145 100% of discovered PDR throughput.
147 CSIT |release| includes following performance test suites, listed per NIC type:
149 - 2port10GE X520-DA2 Intel
151 - **L2XC** - L2 Cross-Connect switched-forwarding of untagged, dot1q, dot1ad
152 VLAN tagged Ethernet frames.
153 - **L2BD** - L2 Bridge-Domain switched-forwarding of untagged Ethernet frames
154 with MAC learning; disabled MAC learning i.e. static MAC tests to be added.
155 - **L2BD Scale** - L2 Bridge-Domain switched-forwarding of untagged Ethernet
156 frames with MAC learning; disabled MAC learning i.e. static MAC tests to be
157 added with 20k, 200k and 2M FIB entries.
158 - **IPv4** - IPv4 routed-forwarding.
159 - **IPv6** - IPv6 routed-forwarding.
160 - **IPv4 Scale** - IPv4 routed-forwarding with 20k, 200k and 2M FIB entries.
161 - **IPv6 Scale** - IPv6 routed-forwarding with 20k, 200k and 2M FIB entries.
162 - **VMs with vhost-user** - virtual topologies with 1 VM and service chains
163 of 2 VMs using vhost-user interfaces, with VPP forwarding modes incl. L2
164 Cross-Connect, L2 Bridge-Domain, VXLAN with L2BD, IPv4 routed-forwarding.
165 - **COP** - IPv4 and IPv6 routed-forwarding with COP address security.
166 - **ACL** - L2 Bridge-Domain switched-forwarding and IPv4 and IPv6 routed-
167 forwarding with iACL and oACL IP address, MAC address and L4 port security.
168 - **LISP** - LISP overlay tunneling for IPv4-over-IPv4, IPv6-over-IPv4,
169 IPv6-over-IPv6, IPv4-over-IPv6 in IPv4 and IPv6 routed-forwarding modes.
170 - **VXLAN** - VXLAN overlay tunnelling integration with L2XC and L2BD.
171 - **QoS Policer** - ingress packet rate measuring, marking and limiting
173 - **NAT** - (Source) Network Address Translation tests with varying
174 number of users and ports per user.
175 - **Container memif connections** - VPP memif virtual interface tests to
176 interconnect VPP instances with L2XC and L2BD.
177 - **Container K8s Orchestrated Topologies** - Container topologies connected
178 over the memif virtual interface.
179 - **SRv6** - Segment Routing IPv6 tests.
181 - 2port40GE XL710 Intel
183 - **L2XC** - L2 Cross-Connect switched-forwarding of untagged Ethernet frames.
184 - **L2BD** - L2 Bridge-Domain switched-forwarding of untagged Ethernet frames
186 - **IPv4** - IPv4 routed-forwarding.
187 - **IPv6** - IPv6 routed-forwarding.
188 - **VMs with vhost-user** - virtual topologies with 1 VM and service chains
189 of 2 VMs using vhost-user interfaces, with VPP forwarding modes incl. L2
190 Cross-Connect, L2 Bridge-Domain, VXLAN with L2BD, IPv4 routed-forwarding.
191 - **IPSecSW** - IPSec encryption with AES-GCM, CBC-SHA1 ciphers, in
192 combination with IPv4 routed-forwarding.
193 - **IPSecHW** - IPSec encryption with AES-GCM, CBC-SHA1 ciphers, in
194 combination with IPv4 routed-forwarding. Intel QAT HW acceleration.
195 - **IPSec+LISP** - IPSec encryption with CBC-SHA1 ciphers, in combination
196 with LISP-GPE overlay tunneling for IPv4-over-IPv4.
197 - **VPP TCP/IP stack** - tests of VPP TCP/IP stack used with VPP built-in HTTP
199 - **Container memif connections** - VPP memif virtual interface tests to
200 interconnect VPP instances with L2XC and L2BD.
202 - 2port10GE X710 Intel
204 - **L2BD** - L2 Bridge-Domain switched-forwarding of untagged Ethernet frames
206 - **VMs with vhost-user** - virtual topologies with 1 VM using vhost-user
207 interfaces, with VPP forwarding modes incl. L2 Bridge-Domain.
208 - **Container memif connections** - VPP memif virtual interface tests to
209 interconnect VPP instances with L2XC and L2BD.
210 - **Container K8s Orchestrated Topologies** - Container topologies connected
211 over the memif virtual interface.
213 - 2port10GE VIC1227 Cisco
215 - **L2BD** - L2 Bridge-Domain switched-forwarding of untagged Ethernet frames
218 - 2port40GE VIC1385 Cisco
220 - **L2BD** - L2 Bridge-Domain switched-forwarding of untagged Ethernet frames
223 Execution of performance tests takes time, especially the throughput discovery
224 tests. Due to limited HW testbed resources available within FD.io labs hosted
225 by :abbr:`LF (Linux Foundation)`, the number of tests for NICs other than X520
226 (a.k.a. Niantic) has been limited to few baseline tests. CSIT team expect the
227 HW testbed resources to grow over time, so that complete set of performance
228 tests can be regularly and(or) continuously executed against all models of
229 hardware present in FD.io labs.
231 Performance Tests Naming
232 ------------------------
234 CSIT |release| follows a common structured naming convention for all performance
235 and system functional tests, introduced in CSIT |release-1|.
237 The naming should be intuitive for majority of the tests. Complete description
238 of CSIT test naming convention is provided on `CSIT test naming wiki
239 <https://wiki.fd.io/view/CSIT/csit-test-naming>`_.