fuel-plugin-mellanox/doc/source/overview.rst

Mellanox plugin

The Mellanox Fuel plugin is a bundle of scripts, packages and metadata that will extend Fuel and add Mellanox features such as SR-IOV for networking and iSER protocol for storage.

Fuel can configure Mellanox ConnectX-4 network adapters to accelerate the performance of compute and storage traffic.

This implements the following performance enhancements:

• Compute nodes network enhancements:

  • SR-IOV based networking
  • QoS for VM traffic
  • VXLAN traffic offload

• Cinder nodes use iSER block storage as the iSCSI transport rather than the default iSCSI over TCP.

These features reduce CPU overhead, boost throughput, reduce latency, and enable network traffic to bypass the software switch layer (e.g. Open vSwitch).

Mellanox Plugin integration with Mellanox NEO SDN Controller enables switch VLAN auto provisioning and port configuration for Ethernet and SM PK auto provisioning for InfiniBand networks, over private VLAN networks.

Developer's specification

Please refer to: HowTo Install Mellanox OpenStack Plugin for Mirantis Fuel 8.0

Requirements

Requirement	Version/Comment
Mirantis OpenStack compatibility	8.0

The Mellanox ConnectX-4 adapters family supports up to 100 Gb/s. To reach 100 Gb/s speed in your network with ConnectX-4 adapters, you must use Mellanox Ethernet / Infiniband switches supporting 100 Gb (e.g. SN2700 (ETH), SB7700 (IB)). The switch ports should be configured specifically to use 100 Gb speed. No additional configuration is required on the adapter side.

Limitations

1. when using iSER and bonding, the storage interface will be a virtual function under the first port, and will not support failover.
2. when using SR-IOV and bonding, the virtual functions will be created and allocated from the first interface, and failover is not supported.