Setting up Open vSwitch for DPDK on Ubuntu 18.04

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Alright, setting up Open vSwitch for DPDK on Ubuntu 18.04. This is a task that can be daunting for some, but don’t worry bro!! We’re here to make it as easy and painless as possible.

To start, you need to have DPDK installed on your system. If you haven’t done so already, head over to the official website and follow their instructions for installing DPDK on Ubuntu 18.04 (or any other version of Linux). Once that’s taken care of, let’s move onto setting up Open vSwitch.

Step 1: Install Open vSwitch
To install Open vSwitch, open a terminal and run the following command:

# Update the package list and install the Open vSwitch datapath module for DKMS
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y openvswitch-datapath-dkms

This will download and install the necessary packages for running DPDK with Open vSwitch.

Step 2: Configure your network interfaces
Before we can start using Open vSwitch, we need to configure our network interfaces. This involves creating a bridge that will act as our virtual switch. To do this, open another terminal and run the following commands:

# Set eth0 interface to down state
sudo ifconfig eth0 down

# Set eth0 interface to up state with promiscuous mode enabled
sudo ip link set dev eth0 up promisc on

# Create a bridge named br0
sudo ovs-ofctl add-br br0

# Add eth0 interface as a port to the br0 bridge
sudo ovs-ofctl add-port br0 eth0

# Set eth0 interface to up state
sudo ifconfig eth0 up

This will disable the physical network interface (eth0), enable it in promiscuous mode, create a new bridge called ‘br0’, and add our physical network interface to that bridge.

Step 3: Configure DPDK for Open vSwitch
Now that we have our virtual switch set up, let’s configure DPDK to work with it. To do this, open another terminal and run the following commands:

# Load the dpdk_ethdev module
sudo modprobe dpdk_ethdev

# Add options for dpdk_ethdev to the dpdk-ovs.conf file
sudo echo "options dpdk_ethdev num_vfs=1" >> /etc/modprobe.d/dpdk-ovs.conf

# Add options for dpdk_uio to the dpdk-ovs.conf file
sudo echo "options dpdk_uio rss_ip=0x3,rss_hw=0xffffffff,rxq_size=4096,txq_size=4096" >> /etc/modprobe.d/dpdk-ovs.conf

This will load the DPDK module with one virtual function (vF), set up RSS for IP and hardware hash, and configure our receive and transmit queues to be 4096 bytes each.

Step 4: Configure Open vSwitch for DPDK
Finally, let’s configure Open vSwitch to use DPDK as its datapath driver. To do this, open another terminal and run the following commands:


# Set up RSS for IP and hardware hash
# RSS (Receive Side Scaling) allows for distribution of incoming network traffic across multiple CPU cores
# This improves performance and reduces bottlenecks
# Hardware hash is a method of load balancing that uses a hash function to distribute traffic across multiple queues
# This also helps with performance and reduces congestion
function (vF)

# Configure receive and transmit queues to be 4096 bytes each
# This sets the size of the queues to handle incoming and outgoing network traffic
# A larger queue size allows for more data to be processed at once, improving performance
set up RSS for IP and hardware hash

# Configure Open vSwitch to use DPDK as its datapath driver
# DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) is a set of libraries and drivers for fast packet processing
# It allows for high-speed data transfer between network interfaces and applications
# This improves network performance and reduces latency
sudo ovs-vsctl set bridge br0 other_config:dpdk=true

# Set the transmit queue size to 4096 bytes
# This ensures that the queue can handle a large amount of outgoing traffic
sudo ovs-vsctl set bridge br0 other_config:dpdk-txq-size=4096

# Set the receive queue size to 4096 bytes
# This ensures that the queue can handle a large amount of incoming traffic
sudo ovs-vsctl set bridge br0 other_config:dpdk-rxq-size=4096

This will enable DPDK as the datapath driver for our virtual switch, and configure our receive and transmit queues to be 4096 bytes each.

And that’s it! You should now have Open vSwitch set up with DPDK on Ubuntu 18.04. If you run into any issues or have questions, feel free to reach out in the comments section below.

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