Virtio Network Interfaces¶
When running the Anapaya appliance in a virtualized environment, you can use Virtio network interfaces when SRIOV is not available. We generally recommended using SRIOV interfaces for better performance.
Configuration¶
To use Virtio network interfaces for data traffic, you need to configure the
appliance to use the VPP_DPDK driver. You can do this by setting the
VPP_DPDK driver in the interfaces.ethernets section of the appliance
configuration. If you want to use Virtio interfaces for management traffic, you
need to set the LINUX driver in the interfaces.ethernets section.
Multiqueue¶
To improve performance, you can enable multiqueue support for Virtio interfaces. It is very important to set the number of queues to the number of workers assigned to VPP in the appliance configuration. Note that the number of workers does not equal the number of vCPUs assigned to the appliance.
Warning
When using Virtio with multiqueue, you need to manually configure the number of VPP workers. You cannot use the automatic forwarding core assignment.
Recommended Configurations¶
On an appliance with
4 vCPUs, you should set the number of workers and Virtio queues to 2 for every interface.
8 vCPUs, you should set the number of workers and Virtio queues to 4 for every interface.
Note
Refer to the performance guide for more information on how to configure VPP workers.