xref: /dpdk/doc/guides/sample_app_ug/vmdq_dcb_forwarding.rst (revision 9a212dc06c7aaf09b146d9c3dcfd584d741634c1)
1..  SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2    Copyright(c) 2010-2014 Intel Corporation.
3
4VMDQ and DCB Forwarding Sample Application
5==========================================
6
7The VMDQ and DCB Forwarding sample application is a simple example of packet processing using the DPDK.
8The application performs L2 forwarding using VMDQ and DCB to divide the incoming traffic into queues.
9The traffic splitting is performed in hardware by the VMDQ and DCB features of the Intel® 82599 and X710/XL710 Ethernet Controllers.
10
11Overview
12--------
13
14This sample application can be used as a starting point for developing a new application that is based on the DPDK and
15uses VMDQ and DCB for traffic partitioning.
16
17The VMDQ and DCB filters work on MAC and VLAN traffic to divide the traffic into input queues on the basis of the Destination MAC
18address, VLAN ID and VLAN user priority fields.
19VMDQ filters split the traffic into 16 or 32 groups based on the Destination MAC and VLAN ID.
20Then, DCB places each packet into one of queues within that group, based upon the VLAN user priority field.
21
22All traffic is read from a single incoming port (port 0) and output on port 1, without any processing being performed.
23With Intel® 82599 NIC, for example, the traffic is split into 128 queues on input, where each thread of the application reads from
24multiple queues. When run with 8 threads, that is, with the -c FF option, each thread receives and forwards packets from 16 queues.
25
26As supplied, the sample application configures the VMDQ feature to have 32 pools with 4 queues each as indicated in :numref:`figure_vmdq_dcb_example`.
27The Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller NIC also supports the splitting of traffic into 16 pools of 8 queues. While the
28Intel® X710 or XL710 Ethernet Controller NICs support many configurations of VMDQ pools of 4 or 8 queues each. For simplicity, only 16
29or 32 pools is supported in this sample. And queues numbers for each VMDQ pool can be changed by setting RTE_LIBRTE_I40E_QUEUE_NUM_PER_VM
30in config/rte_config.h file.
31The nb-pools, nb-tcs and enable-rss parameters can be passed on the command line, after the EAL parameters:
32
33.. code-block:: console
34
35    ./<build_dir>/examples/dpdk-vmdq_dcb [EAL options] -- -p PORTMASK --nb-pools NP --nb-tcs TC --enable-rss
36
37where, NP can be 16 or 32, TC can be 4 or 8, rss is disabled by default.
38
39.. _figure_vmdq_dcb_example:
40
41.. figure:: img/vmdq_dcb_example.*
42
43   Packet Flow Through the VMDQ and DCB Sample Application
44
45
46In Linux* user space, the application can display statistics with the number of packets received on each queue.
47To have the application display the statistics, send a SIGHUP signal to the running application process.
48
49The VMDQ and DCB Forwarding sample application is in many ways simpler than the L2 Forwarding application
50(see :doc:`l2_forward_real_virtual`)
51as it performs unidirectional L2 forwarding of packets from one port to a second port.
52No command-line options are taken by this application apart from the standard EAL command-line options.
53
54.. note::
55
56    Since VMD queues are being used for VMM, this application works correctly
57    when VTd is disabled in the BIOS or Linux* kernel (intel_iommu=off).
58
59Compiling the Application
60-------------------------
61
62
63
64To compile the sample application see :doc:`compiling`.
65
66The application is located in the ``vmdq_dcb`` sub-directory.
67
68Running the Application
69-----------------------
70
71To run the example in a linux environment:
72
73.. code-block:: console
74
75    user@target:~$ ./<build_dir>/examples/dpdk-vmdq_dcb -l 0-3 -n 4 -- -p 0x3 --nb-pools 32 --nb-tcs 4
76
77Refer to the *DPDK Getting Started Guide* for general information on running applications and
78the Environment Abstraction Layer (EAL) options.
79
80Explanation
81-----------
82
83The following sections provide some explanation of the code.
84
85Initialization
86~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
87
88The EAL, driver and PCI configuration is performed largely as in the L2 Forwarding sample application,
89as is the creation of the mbuf pool.
90See :doc:`l2_forward_real_virtual`.
91Where this example application differs is in the configuration of the NIC port for RX.
92
93The VMDQ and DCB hardware feature is configured at port initialization time by setting the appropriate values in the
94rte_eth_conf structure passed to the rte_eth_dev_configure() API.
95Initially in the application,
96a default structure is provided for VMDQ and DCB configuration to be filled in later by the application.
97
98.. literalinclude:: ../../../examples/vmdq_dcb/main.c
99    :language: c
100    :start-after: Empty vmdq+dcb configuration structure. Filled in programmatically. 8<
101    :end-before: >8 End of empty vmdq+dcb configuration structure.
102
103The get_eth_conf() function fills in an rte_eth_conf structure with the appropriate values,
104based on the global vlan_tags array,
105and dividing up the possible user priority values equally among the individual queues
106(also referred to as traffic classes) within each pool. With Intel® 82599 NIC,
107if the number of pools is 32, then the user priority fields are allocated 2 to a queue.
108If 16 pools are used, then each of the 8 user priority fields is allocated to its own queue within the pool.
109With Intel® X710/XL710 NICs, if number of tcs is 4, and number of queues in pool is 8,
110then the user priority fields are allocated 2 to one tc, and a tc has 2 queues mapping to it, then
111RSS will determine the destination queue in 2.
112For the VLAN IDs, each one can be allocated to possibly multiple pools of queues,
113so the pools parameter in the rte_eth_vmdq_dcb_conf structure is specified as a bitmask value.
114For destination MAC, each VMDQ pool will be assigned with a MAC address. In this sample, each VMDQ pool
115is assigned to the MAC like 52:54:00:12:<port_id>:<pool_id>, that is,
116the MAC of VMDQ pool 2 on port 1 is 52:54:00:12:01:02.
117
118.. literalinclude:: ../../../examples/vmdq_dcb/main.c
119    :language: c
120    :start-after: Dividing up the possible user priority values. 8<
121    :end-before: >8 End of dividing up the possible user priority values.
122
123.. literalinclude:: ../../../examples/vmdq_dcb/main.c
124    :language: c
125    :start-after: Set mac for each pool. 8<
126    :end-before: >8 End of set mac for each pool.
127    :dedent: 1
128
129Once the network port has been initialized using the correct VMDQ and DCB values,
130the initialization of the port's RX and TX hardware rings is performed similarly to that
131in the L2 Forwarding sample application.
132See :doc:`l2_forward_real_virtual` for more information.
133
134Statistics Display
135~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
136
137When run in a linux environment,
138the VMDQ and DCB Forwarding sample application can display statistics showing the number of packets read from each RX queue.
139This is provided by way of a signal handler for the SIGHUP signal,
140which simply prints to standard output the packet counts in grid form.
141Each row of the output is a single pool with the columns being the queue number within that pool.
142
143To generate the statistics output, use the following command:
144
145.. code-block:: console
146
147    user@host$ sudo killall -HUP vmdq_dcb_app
148
149Please note that the statistics output will appear on the terminal where the vmdq_dcb_app is running,
150rather than the terminal from which the HUP signal was sent.
151