Mellanox Plugin for Fuel

Mellanox plugin

Beginning with version 5.1, Fuel can configure Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro network adapters to accelerate the performance of compute and storage traffic. This implements the following performance enhancements:

• Compute nodes use SR-IOV based networking.
• 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). Starting with version 6.1, Mellanox plugin can deploy those features over Infiniband network as well.

Requirements

Requirement	Version/Comment
Mirantis OpenStack compatibility	>= 6.1

The Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro adapters family supports up to 40/56GbE. To reach 56 GbE speed in your network with ConnectX-3 Pro adapters, you must use Mellanox Ethernet / Infiniband switches (e.g. SX1036) with the additional 56GbE license. The switch ports should be configured specifically to use 56GbE speed. No additional configuration is required on the adapter side. For additional information about how to run in 56GbE speed, see HowTo Configure 56GbE Link on Mellanox Adapters and Switches.

For detailed setup configuration and BOM (Bill of Material) requirements please see Fuel Ethernet cloud details or Fuel Infiniband cloud details.

Installation Guide

Mellanox plugin installation

To install Mellanox plugin, follow these steps:

1. Download the plugin from Fuel Plugins Catalog

2. Copy the plugin on already installed Fuel Master node; ssh can be used for that. If you do not have the Fuel Master node yet, see Quick Start Guide :

    # scp mellanox-plugin-1.0-1.0.0-0.noarch.rpm root@<Fuel_Master_ip>:/tmp
   

3. Install the plugin:

    # cd /tmp
    # fuel plugins --install mellanox-plugin-1.0-1.0.0-0.noarch.rpm
    NOTE: Mellanox plugin installation replaces your bootstrap image.
          The original image is backed up in /opt/old_bootstrap_image/.
   

4. Check if the plugin was installed successfully:

    # fuel plugins
    id | name              | version | package_version
    ---|-------------------|---------|----------------
    1  | mellanox-plugin   | 1.0.0   | 2.0.0
   

Mellanox plugin configuration

For instructions, more information and release notes, see the Mellanox Plugin Installation Guide in the Fuel Plugins Catalog

Contributors

David Slama dudus@mellanox.com (PM) Aviram Bar-Haim aviramb@mellanox.com (Release manager) Andrey Yevsyukov andreyy@mellanox.com (Developer) Gil Meir gmeir11@gmail.com (Developer) Amichay Polishuk amichayp@mellanox.com (QA engineer) Noam Angel amichayp@mellanox.com (QA engineer) Lenny Verkhovsky lennyb@mellanox.com (Verification engineer) Rawan Herzallah rherzallah@asaltech.com (Verification engineer) Murad Awawdeh mawawdeh@asaltech.com (Verification engineer)