Chapter 6. Configuring PCI passthrough
You can use PCI passthrough to attach a physical PCI device, such as a graphics card or a network device, to an instance. If you use PCI passthrough for a device, the instance reserves exclusive access to the device for performing tasks, and the device is not available to the host.
Using PCI passthrough with routed provider networks
The Compute service does not support single networks that span multiple provider networks. When a network contains multiple physical networks, the Compute service only uses the first physical network. Therefore, if you are using routed provider networks you must use the same physical_network
name across all the Compute nodes.
If you use routed provider networks with VLAN or flat networks, you must use the same physical_network
name for all segments. You then create multiple segments for the network and map the segments to the appropriate subnets.
To enable your cloud users to create instances with PCI devices attached, you must complete the following:
- Designate Compute nodes for PCI passthrough.
- Configure the Compute nodes for PCI passthrough that have the required PCI devices.
- Deploy the overcloud.
- Create a flavor for launching instances with PCI devices attached.
Prerequisites
- The Compute nodes have the required PCI devices.
6.1. Designating Compute nodes for PCI passthrough
To designate Compute nodes for instances with physical PCI devices attached, you must:
- create a new role file to configure the PCI passthrough role
- configure a new overcloud flavor for PCI passthrough to use to tag the Compute nodes for PCI passthrough
Procedure
Generate a new roles data file named
roles_data_pci_passthrough.yaml
that includes theController
,Compute
, andComputePCI
roles:(undercloud)$ openstack overcloud roles \ generate -o /home/stack/templates/roles_data_pci_passthrough.yaml \ Compute:ComputePCI Compute Controller
Open
roles_data_pci_passthrough.yaml
and edit or add the following parameters and sections:Section/Parameter Current value New value Role comment
Role: Compute
Role: ComputePCI
Role name
name: Compute
name: ComputePCI
description
Basic Compute Node role
PCI Passthrough Compute Node role
HostnameFormatDefault
%stackname%-novacompute-%index%
%stackname%-novacomputepci-%index%
deprecated_nic_config_name
compute.yaml
compute-pci-passthrough.yaml
-
Register the PCI passthrough Compute nodes for the overcloud by adding them to your node definition template,
node.json
ornode.yaml
. For more information, see Registering nodes for the overcloud in the Director Installation and Usage guide. Inspect the node hardware:
(undercloud)$ openstack overcloud node introspect \ --all-manageable --provide
For more information, see Inspecting the hardware of nodes in the Director Installation and Usage guide.
Create the
compute-pci-passthrough
bare metal flavor to use to tag nodes that you want to designate for PCI passthrough:(undercloud)$ openstack flavor create --id auto \ --ram <ram_size_mb> --disk <disk_size_gb> \ --vcpus <no_vcpus> compute-pci-passthrough
-
Replace
<ram_size_mb>
with the RAM of the bare metal node, in MB. -
Replace
<disk_size_gb>
with the size of the disk on the bare metal node, in GB. Replace
<no_vcpus>
with the number of CPUs on the bare metal node.NoteThese properties are not used for scheduling instances. However, the Compute scheduler does use the disk size to determine the root partition size.
-
Replace
Tag each bare metal node that you want to designate for PCI passthrough with a custom PCI passthrough resource class:
(undercloud)$ openstack baremetal node set \ --resource-class baremetal.PCI-PASSTHROUGH <node>
Replace
<node>
with the ID of the bare metal node.Associate the
compute-pci-passthrough
flavor with the custom PCI passthrough resource class:(undercloud)$ openstack flavor set \ --property resources:CUSTOM_BAREMETAL_PCI_PASSTHROUGH=1 \ compute-pci-passthrough
To determine the name of a custom resource class that corresponds to a resource class of a Bare Metal service node, convert the resource class to uppercase, replace all punctuation with an underscore, and prefix with
CUSTOM_
.NoteA flavor can request only one instance of a bare metal resource class.
Set the following flavor properties to prevent the Compute scheduler from using the bare metal flavor properties to schedule instances:
(undercloud)$ openstack flavor set \ --property resources:VCPU=0 --property resources:MEMORY_MB=0 \ --property resources:DISK_GB=0 compute-pci-passthrough
Add the following parameters to the
node-info.yaml
file to specify the number of PCI passthrough Compute nodes, and the flavor to use for the PCI passthrough designated Compute nodes:parameter_defaults: OvercloudComputePCIFlavor: compute-pci-passthrough ComputePCICount: 3
To verify that the role was created, enter the following command:
(undercloud)$ openstack overcloud profiles list
6.2. Configuring a PCI passthrough Compute node
To enable your cloud users to create instances with PCI devices attached, you must configure both the Compute nodes that have the PCI devices and the Controller nodes.
Procedure
-
Create an environment file to configure the Controller node on the overcloud for PCI passthrough, for example,
pci_passthrough_controller.yaml
. Add
PciPassthroughFilter
to theNovaSchedulerDefaultFilters
parameter inpci_passthrough_controller.yaml
:parameter_defaults: NovaSchedulerDefaultFilters: ['AvailabilityZoneFilter','ComputeFilter','ComputeCapabilitiesFilter','ImagePropertiesFilter','ServerGroupAntiAffinityFilter','ServerGroupAffinityFilter','PciPassthroughFilter','NUMATopologyFilter']
To specify the PCI alias for the devices on the Controller node, add the following configuration to
pci_passthrough_controller.yaml
:parameter_defaults: ... ControllerExtraConfig: nova::pci::aliases: - name: "a1" product_id: "1572" vendor_id: "8086" device_type: "type-PF"
For more information about configuring the
device_type
field, see PCI passthrough device type field.NoteIf the
nova-api
service is running in a role different from theController
role, replaceControllerExtraConfig
with the user role in the format<Role>ExtraConfig
.Optional: To set a default NUMA affinity policy for PCI passthrough devices, add
numa_policy
to thenova::pci::aliases:
configuration from step 3:parameter_defaults: ... ControllerExtraConfig: nova::pci::aliases: - name: "a1" product_id: "1572" vendor_id: "8086" device_type: "type-PF" numa_policy: "preferred"
-
To configure the Compute node on the overcloud for PCI passthrough, create an environment file, for example,
pci_passthrough_compute.yaml
. To specify the available PCIs for the devices on the Compute node, use the
vendor_id
andproduct_id
options to add all matching PCI devices to the pool of PCI devices available for passthrough to instances. For example, to add all Intel® Ethernet Controller X710 devices to the pool of PCI devices available for passthrough to instances, add the following configuration topci_passthrough_compute.yaml
:parameter_defaults: ... ComputePCIParameters: NovaPCIPassthrough: - vendor_id: "8086" product_id: "1572"
For more information about how to configure
NovaPCIPassthrough
, see Guidelines for configuringNovaPCIPassthrough
.You must create a copy of the PCI alias on the Compute node for instance migration and resize operations. To specify the PCI alias for the devices on the PCI passthrough Compute node, add the following to
pci_passthrough_compute.yaml
:parameter_defaults: ... ComputePCIExtraConfig: nova::pci::aliases: - name: "a1" product_id: "1572" vendor_id: "8086" device_type: "type-PF"
NoteThe Compute node aliases must be identical to the aliases on the Controller node. Therefore, if you added
numa_affinity
tonova::pci::aliases
inpci_passthrough_controller.yaml
, then you must also add it tonova::pci::aliases
inpci_passthrough_compute.yaml
.To enable IOMMU in the server BIOS of the Compute nodes to support PCI passthrough, add the
KernelArgs
parameter topci_passthrough_compute.yaml
. For example, use the followingKernalArgs
settings to enable an Intel IOMMU:parameter_defaults: ... ComputePCIParameters: KernelArgs: "intel_iommu=on iommu=pt"
To enable an AMD IOMMU, set
KernelArgs
to"amd_iommu=on iommu=pt"
.Add your custom environment files to the stack with your other environment files and deploy the overcloud:
(undercloud)$ openstack overcloud deploy --templates \ -e [your environment files] \ -e /home/stack/templates/pci_passthrough_controller.yaml \ -e /home/stack/templates/pci_passthrough_compute.yaml \
Create and configure the flavors that your cloud users can use to request the PCI devices. The following example requests two devices, each with a vendor ID of
8086
and a product ID of1572
, using the alias defined in step 7:(overcloud)# openstack flavor set \ --property "pci_passthrough:alias"="a1:2" device_passthrough
Verification
Create an instance with a PCI passthrough device:
# openstack server create --flavor device_passthrough \ --image <image> --wait test-pci
- Log in to the instance as a cloud user. For more information, see Log in to an Instance.
To verify that the PCI device is accessible from the instance, enter the following command from the instance:
$ lspci -nn | grep <device_name>
6.3. PCI passthrough device type field
The Compute service categorizes PCI devices into one of three types, depending on the capabilities the devices report. The following lists the valid values that you can set the device_type
field to:
type-PF
- The device supports SR-IOV and is the parent or root device. Specify this device type to passthrough a device that supports SR-IOV in its entirety.
type-VF
- The device is a child device of a device that supports SR-IOV.
type-PCI
-
The device does not support SR-IOV. This is the default device type if the
device_type
field is not set.
You must configure the Compute and Controller nodes with the same device_type
.
6.4. Guidelines for configuring NovaPCIPassthrough
-
Do not use the
devname
parameter when configuring PCI passthrough, as the device name of a NIC can change. Instead, usevendor_id
andproduct_id
because they are more stable, or use theaddress
of the NIC. -
To use the
product_id
parameter to pass through a Physical Function (PF), you must also specify theaddress
of the PF. However, you can use just theaddress
parameter to specify PFs, because the address is unique on each host. -
To pass through all the Virtual Functions (VFs) you must specify only the
product_id
andvendor_id
. You must also specify theaddress
if you are using SRIOV for NIC partitioning and you are running OVS on a VF. -
To pass through only the VFs for a PF but not the PF itself, you can use the
address
parameter to specify the PCI address of the PF andproduct_id
to specify the product ID of the VF.