Anuket Project

2023-03-08 Agenda and Minutes

New Time: 6AM Pacific Wednesday. 3PM CET, 2PM GMT, 1930 India time    US is on Standard Time. Pacific time is UTC+0800.  NEXT WEEK US Begins Daylight Savings Time (clocks move ahead 1 hour)

Attendees

Al Morton Sridhar Rao   Trevor Cooper 

Agenda

main topics today:  UNH IOT Transition.   Other possibilities: Comments on Containerized Benchmarking, Deepdive on eBPF XDP AF_XDP

ItemDescwhoNotes/minutes

UNH transitionAll

ACTION: Need to determine the STABILITY of the current booking, which expired but still works. Mail to UNH.

Notes on:  

Can automate the IP addrs assignments for all the traffic links - How?   Can Config.YAML really work?  or is Ansible better?


Deepdive on eBPF XDP AF_XDPSridhar


Note from  First step is to verify that a single L2 forwarder will work (Cillium's ability to use DPDK is in question)



Discussion: Contribution on Containerized network benchmarking in BMWG session IETF-115All


Notes on

eBPF Acceleration Model Figure is not accurate - trying to cover too many scenarios. Need two figures, since eBPF can also be in user space.

Statement that Cillium with DPDK forwarding app, and DPDK traffic gen testing is not possible. Cannot connect the parts in teh testbed.

Comment about last slide: it's mostly the Rx queue that contributes to performance,

Sridhar will send a version of the word file with his text corrections included.


 Invite Minh-Ngoc Tran to a future meeting, to check if our comments were adopted.

Review with Minh-Ngoc Tran 

Draft: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-dcn-bmwg-containerized-infra-09.html

Slides: Considerations for Benchmarking Network Performance in Containerized Infrastructure  

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-dcn-bmwg-containerized-infra/

yangun@dcn.ssu.ac.kr  Sirdhar will contact.

mipearlska1307@dcn.ssu.ac.kr presented at IETF-115

Comments: ETSI TST009 scenarios were preliminary and not tested.  The draft extends these scenarios with Pod inside VM.

Sridhar Rao Tested many similar scenarios - performance difference among with VM and without VM is negligible. Not really necessary to test.  Minh needs to check this with colleagues  Sridhar will share our teams results - part of Daniele's work.  The reason people run VMs is for security reasons and resource isolation -WHEN Containers did not supply.

Parameters section: Cannot use a CNI independent of the Networking model (SRIOV or user space determines this)

Some Networking models listed are not relevant when performance is the priority. Are these even applicable when performance matters? maybe not.  For example, their networking model includes Kernel space switching will perform poorly. Minh replies that ALL the Models are included.  Need to categorize into good/bad perf.  Minh agrees.

Performance Impacts:  Major example is Number of Cores, which is not included in the Draft.  Please add this.  Minh agrees.

Section 3 clarify the use of Containers and Pods - used interchangeably now. need to clarify

Section 3 Some generalizations about CNI are not correct - Some CNI do not use user namespace

Figure 1 What is Container Engine?  is it Container Run-time. 

4.2 Some duplication on Container Network Plugin? Agree.  Can use different CNI with same network Model - no difference. The SR-IOV networking model would make a big difference with other models, but CNI not so much.  The Vswitch and the Networking model are closely tied together (Models with VPP are not possible with OVS, for example).

Section 4.3 CNI does not create it's own switch functions   Also, which of 5 networking models does Calico fall. Figures in Section 4.3.  Normal Calico does not use eBPF  Calico should fall in section 4.3.1 figure, but needs to be fixed. (remove "VSwitch")  and add Kernel routing tables in the user space vswitch block.

There was a Cillium eBPF scenario that was in the slides - this is not possible with the traffic gen and DPDK.


UNH transitionAll

Given that our Pod terminated (time-out) is there any way to recover? Or better to start from scratch?

Can automate the IP addrs assignments for all the traffic links - How?   Can Config.YAML really work?  or is Ansible better?



Testbed - IXIA supportSridhar/Al

Tim Gresham asks for resolution on this.

If we can get it, do we want it?  No good without license!  So, is a license still valid or available for update?

THEN - need to ship and install in UNH, get working there - IXIA help  to do this.

 

Trevor Cooper says connected and powered on, but we still might have a license issue. Need Pierre's help.

this activity seems to have stalled ...

Pod 19 also not accessible - Dan Xu.




Progress for NILE Release

(summary: items 5,6,and 7 lack the necessary automated address discovery feature, defer)

see Nile Release Schedule  Nile Release Progress page      M4 currently due on Dec 9,    M5 due on Dec 16

1

Update OS versions

https://lf-anuket.atlassian.net/browse/VINEPERF-673

Tasks: 
  1. DPDK
  2. Qemu
  3. Operating Systems
  4. Containers

Tasks 1, 3, and 4have been completed/merged. Not doing 2.  DONE



2Automate setting up eBPF-based CNIs - xdp, cilium, calico.

 https://lf-anuket.atlassian.net/browse/VINEPERF-677

setup - xdp,

cilium,

calico.

Patch submitted patch, will request review.


3

Improve the ViNePerf Build Stability

https://lf-anuket.atlassian.net/browse/VINEPERF-675

Starting from the build to the 3 environments

  1. baremetal
  2. openstack and
  3. K8s

Testing in-progress: either run in OS or K8s - 2 and 3 are challenging and 3 is the priority.



4eBPF Metrics Collection

https://lf-anuket.atlassian.net/browse/VINEPERF-674

Task: Develop Tool to collect metrics from eBPF programs.

Existing tool, just running it with a script

Skywalking from Apache  

skywalking-rover   possible eBPF plugin in collectd -

propose for barometer  or KDDI -






Tasks below are deferred from Moselle - likely Defer Again because container networking support is poor and requires significant work-arounds.




5Epic-VINEPERF-652:Enhance XTesting-ViNePerf IntegrationMoved to Next Releasedepends on 7


6Task-VINEPERF-658:Enhance framework for XTesting-K8s UsecasePartially done (reading results from output), Deployment tool.1 task remains

7Task-VINEPERF-654:XTesting-ViNePerf Integration Enhancement - Kubernetes Will not implement due to limitations with CNIs.
Moved to Next release - if CNIs support this.

Need CNI to add  flows automatically in Switches (Userspace-CNI, supports DPDK, OVS, VPP). Major impediment to integrate with X-Testing

Sridhar will check with Xavier if ARP resolution is supported in Prox as a switch

TBD