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. The hypervisor must support the multiqueue and RSS Virtio features.

In the case that RSS is not supported by the hypervisor, you must set the num_rx_queues option in the relevant interfaces.ethernets section of the appliance configuration to the number of queues configured in the hypervisor. This is not a recommended configuration and may lead to suboptimal performance.

Note

Refer to the performance guide for more information on the appliance configuration.