xref: /dpdk/doc/guides/sample_app_ug/vhost.rst (revision 5f4f26d3150e2d3121b2afec04eef14704454d40)

..  SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
    Copyright(c) 2010-2016 Intel Corporation.

Vhost Sample Application
========================

The vhost sample application demonstrates integration of the Data Plane
Development Kit (DPDK) with the Linux* KVM hypervisor by implementing the
vhost-net offload API. The sample application performs simple packet
switching between virtual machines based on Media Access Control (MAC)
address or Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) tag. The splitting of Ethernet
traffic from an external switch is performed in hardware by the Virtual
Machine Device Queues (VMDQ) and Data Center Bridging (DCB) features of
the Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller.

Testing steps
-------------

This section shows the steps how to test a typical PVP case with this
dpdk-vhost sample, whereas packets are received from the physical NIC
port first and enqueued to the VM's Rx queue. Through the guest testpmd's
default forwarding mode (io forward), those packets will be put into
the Tx queue. The dpdk-vhost example, in turn, gets the packets and
puts back to the same physical NIC port.

Build
~~~~~

To compile the sample application see :doc:`compiling`.

The application is located in the ``vhost`` sub-directory.

.. note::
   In this example, you need build DPDK both on the host and inside guest.

. _vhost_app_run_vm:

Start the VM
~~~~~~~~~~~~

.. code-block:: console

    qemu-system-x86_64 -machine accel=kvm -cpu host \
        -m $mem -object memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=$mem,mem-path=/dev/hugepages,share=on \
                -mem-prealloc -numa node,memdev=mem \
        \
        -chardev socket,id=char1,path=/tmp/sock0,server \
        -netdev type=vhost-user,id=hostnet1,chardev=char1  \
        -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=hostnet1,id=net1,mac=52:54:00:00:00:14 \
        ...

.. note::
    For basic vhost-user support, QEMU 2.2 (or above) is required. For
    some specific features, a higher version might be need. Such as
    QEMU 2.7 (or above) for the reconnect feature.


Start the vswitch example
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.. code-block:: console

        ./dpdk-vhost -l 0-3 -n 4 --socket-mem 1024  \
             -- --socket-file /tmp/sock0 --client \
             ...

Check the `Parameters`_ section for the explanations on what do those
parameters mean.

.. _vhost_app_run_dpdk_inside_guest:

Run testpmd inside guest
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Make sure you have DPDK built inside the guest. Also make sure the
corresponding virtio-net PCI device is bond to a UIO driver, which
could be done by:

.. code-block:: console

   modprobe vfio-pci
   dpdk/usertools/dpdk-devbind.py -b vfio-pci 0000:00:04.0

Then start testpmd for packet forwarding testing.

.. code-block:: console

    ./<build_dir>/app/dpdk-testpmd -l 0-1 -- -i
    > start tx_first

For more information about vIOMMU and NO-IOMMU and VFIO please refer to
:doc:`/../linux_gsg/linux_drivers` section of the DPDK Getting started guide.

Inject packets
--------------

While a virtio-net is connected to dpdk-vhost, a VLAN tag starts with
1000 is assigned to it. So make sure configure your packet generator
with the right MAC and VLAN tag, you should be able to see following
log from the dpdk-vhost console. It means you get it work::

    VHOST_DATA: (0) mac 52:54:00:00:00:14 and vlan 1000 registered


.. _vhost_app_parameters:

Parameters
----------

**--socket-file path**
Specifies the vhost-user socket file path.

**--client**
DPDK vhost-user will act as the client mode when such option is given.
In the client mode, QEMU will create the socket file. Otherwise, DPDK
will create it. Put simply, it's the server to create the socket file.


**--vm2vm mode**
The vm2vm parameter sets the mode of packet switching between guests in
the host.

- 0 disables vm2vm, implying that VM's packets will always go to the NIC port.
- 1 means a normal mac lookup packet routing.
- 2 means hardware mode packet forwarding between guests, it allows packets
  go to the NIC port, hardware L2 switch will determine which guest the
  packet should forward to or need send to external, which bases on the
  packet destination MAC address and VLAN tag.

**--mergeable 0|1**
Set 0/1 to disable/enable the mergeable Rx feature. It's disabled by default.

**--stats interval**
The stats parameter controls the printing of virtio-net device statistics.
The parameter specifies an interval (in unit of seconds) to print statistics,
with an interval of 0 seconds disabling statistics.

**--rx-retry 0|1**
The rx-retry option enables/disables enqueue retries when the guests Rx queue
is full. This feature resolves a packet loss that is observed at high data
rates, by allowing it to delay and retry in the receive path. This option is
enabled by default.

**--rx-retry-num num**
The rx-retry-num option specifies the number of retries on an Rx burst, it
takes effect only when rx retry is enabled.  The default value is 4.

**--rx-retry-delay msec**
The rx-retry-delay option specifies the timeout (in micro seconds) between
retries on an RX burst, it takes effect only when rx retry is enabled. The
default value is 15.

**--builtin-net-driver**
A very simple vhost-user net driver which demonstrates how to use the generic
vhost APIs will be used when this option is given. It is disabled by default.

**--dmas**
This parameter is used to specify the assigned DMA device of a vhost device.
Async vhost-user net driver will be used if --dmas is set. For example
--dmas [txd0@00:04.0,txd1@00:04.1,rxd0@00:04.2,rxd1@00:04.3] means use
DMA channel 00:04.0/00:04.2 for vhost device 0 enqueue/dequeue operation
and use DMA channel 00:04.1/00:04.3 for vhost device 1 enqueue/dequeue
operation. The index of the device corresponds to the socket file in order,
that means vhost device 0 is created through the first socket file, vhost
device 1 is created through the second socket file, and so on.

**--total-num-mbufs 0-N**
This parameter sets the number of mbufs to be allocated in mbuf pools,
the default value is 147456. This is can be used if launch of a port fails
due to shortage of mbufs.

**--tso 0|1**
Disables/enables TCP segment offload.

**--tx-csum 0|1**
Disables/enables TX checksum offload.

**-p mask**
Port mask which specifies the ports to be used

Common Issues
-------------

* QEMU fails to allocate memory on hugetlbfs, with an error like the
  following::

      file_ram_alloc: can't mmap RAM pages: Cannot allocate memory

  When running QEMU the above error indicates that it has failed to allocate
  memory for the Virtual Machine on the hugetlbfs. This is typically due to
  insufficient hugepages being free to support the allocation request. The
  number of free hugepages can be checked as follows:

  .. code-block:: console

     dpdk-hugepages.py --show

  The command above indicates how many hugepages are free to support QEMU's
  allocation request.

* Failed to build DPDK in VM

  Make sure "-cpu host" QEMU option is given.

* Device start fails if NIC's max queues > the default number of 128

  mbuf pool size is dependent on the MAX_QUEUES configuration, if NIC's
  max queue number is larger than 128, device start will fail due to
  insufficient mbuf. This can be adjusted using ``--total-num-mbufs``
  parameter.

* Option "builtin-net-driver" is incompatible with QEMU

  QEMU vhost net device start will fail if protocol feature is not negotiated.
  DPDK virtio-user PMD can be the replacement of QEMU.

* Device start fails when enabling "builtin-net-driver" without memory
  pre-allocation

  The builtin example doesn't support dynamic memory allocation. When vhost
  backend enables "builtin-net-driver", "--socket-mem" option should be
  added at virtio-user PMD side as a startup item.