openvswitch-switch-dpdk
-----------------------

This package provides a DPDK enabled version of the OpenvSwitch vswitchd
binary; by default, the ovs-vswitchd binary from openvswitch-switch will
be used:

  $ update-alternatives --query ovs-vswitchd
  Name: ovs-vswitchd
  Link: /usr/sbin/ovs-vswitchd
  Status: auto
  Best: /usr/lib/openvswitch-switch/ovs-vswitchd
  Value: /usr/lib/openvswitch-switch/ovs-vswitchd

  Alternative: /usr/lib/openvswitch-switch-dpdk/ovs-vswitchd-dpdk
  Priority: 50

  Alternative: /usr/lib/openvswitch-switch/ovs-vswitchd
  Priority: 100

DPDK provides fast packet processing in userspace, and has some specific
requirements in terms of system configuration - see the upstream
documentation for more details:

  /usr/share/doc/openvswitch-common/INSTALL.DPDK.md.gz

DPDK has a minimum CPU feature set of SSE3, so is not appropriate for all
amd64 CPU types hence is not enabled by default.

To switch to the DPDK version:

   sudo update-alternatives --set ovs-vswitchd \
        /usr/lib/openvswitch-switch-dpdk/ovs-vswitchd-dpdk
   sudo service openvswitch-switch restart

and to switch back:

   sudo update-alternatives --set ovs-vswitchd \
        /usr/lib/openvswitch-switch/ovs-vswitchd
   sudo service openvswitch-switch restart

 -- James Page <james.page@ubuntu.com>  Tue, 21 Jul 2015 12:06:49 +0100