This section describes the hardware and software requirements for SBC SWe on an OpenStack platform.

OpenStack Software Requirements

The SBC SWe supports the following OpenStack environments:

  • Newton with RHOSP 10 and RHEL 7.4
  • Queens with RHOSP 13 and RHEL 7.5
Note

The SBC SWe was tested on OpenStack Queens with RHOSP 13 and RHEL 7.5.

Server Hardware Requirements

ConfigurationRequirement
Processor

Intel Xeon processors (Nehalem micro-architecture or above) with 6 cores and above (processors should support hyper-threading).

Note

Ribbon recommends Westmere (or newer) processors for better SRTP performance. These processors have the AES-NI instruction set for performing cryptographic operations in hardware. 

 RAMMinimum 24 GiB
 Hard DiskMinimum 100 GB
Network Interface Cards (NICs)

Minimum 4 NICs.

Note

Make sure NICs have multi-queue support which enhances network performance by allowing RX and TX queues to scale with the number of CPUs on multi-processor systems.

Note

The Intel I350, x540, x550, and 82599 Ethernet adapters are supported for configuring as SR-IOV and DirectPath I/O pass-through devices.

Note

The PKT ports must be 10 Gbps SR-IOV enabled ports.

Note

6 NICs are required to support PKT port redundancy.

Note

To configure VLAN on SRIOV and PCI Passthrough Ethernet interfaces, disable the Data Center Bridging (DCB) on the switch connected to the interfaces.


S-SBC SWe Requirements

The system hosting the SBC SWe must meet the following requirements to achieve the performance targets listed: 

S-SBC SWe Requirements
for 1000 CPS/120K Signaling Sessions 		Notes

32 vCPUs

Due to the workload characteristics, allocate 20 physical cores with two hyper-threaded CPUs from each core to the SBC.

128 GiB RAM

Must be Huge Page memory. The minimum page size is 2048 KiB, but 1048576 is recommended.

100 GB Disk

None

4 vNICs/6 vNICs

Attach MGT0 port to the Management VirtIO Tenant network.

HA port has to be on IPv4 VirtIO Tenant network.

Attach PKT0 and PKT1 ports to SR-IOV and Provider network.

You must have 6 vNICs to enable PKT port redundancy. For more information, refer to the SBC SWe Features Guide.

Note

All NIC ports must come from the NUMA node 0. The S-SBC SWe instance is hosted on dual-socket physical server with 10 physical cores coming from each NUMA node.


M-SBC SWe Requirements

M-SBC SWe Requirements
for 40K Media Sessions		Notes

16 vCPUs

Due to the workload characteristics, allocate 10 physical cores with two hyper-threaded CPUs from each core and from single NUMA node to the SBC.

32 GiB RAM

Must be Huge Page memory. The minimum page size is 2048 KiB, but 1048576 is recommended.

100 GB Disk

None

4 vNICs/ 6 vNICs

Attach MGT0 port to the Management VirtIO Tenant network.

HA port has to be on IPv4 VirtIO Tenant network.

Attach PKT0 and PKT1 ports to SR-IOV and Provider network.

You must have 6 vNICs to enable PKT port redundancy. For more information, refer to the SBC SWe Features Guide.

Note

All NIC ports must come from the same NUMA node from which the M-SBC SWe instance is hosted.

OAM Node Requirements

OAM Node (minimum)Notes

4 vCPUs

None

16 GiB RAM

None

80 GB Disk

None

4 vNICs

None

I-SBC SWe Requirements

I-SBC SWe RequirementsNotes

20 vCPUs


32 GiB RAM

Must be Huge Page memory. The minimum page size is 2048 KiB, but 1048576 is recommended.

100 GB Disk

None

4 vNICs/ 6 vNICs

Attach MGT0 port to the Management VirtIO Tenant network.

HA port has to be on IPv4 VirtIO Tenant network.

Attach PKT0 and PKT1 ports to SR-IOV and Provider network.

You must have 6 vNICs to enable PKT port redundancy. For more information, refer to the SBC SWe Features Guide.

 


Note

For deployments that require it, you can instantiate the SBC SWe in smaller-sized configurations that use limited memory and vCPU resources. However, the limited resources place some restrictions on capacity and capabilities. Refer to Small SBC SWe Deployment Characteristics and Performance Metrics for Small SBC SWe Configurations for more information.

Recommended Host Settings

To enable changing disk cache method from "none" to "writethrough", execute the following steps on the compute host:

1. Enter the following command to retrieve the current disk cache method in nova configuration on the compute host:

crudini --get /var/lib/config-data/puppet-generated/nova_libvirt/etc/nova/nova.conf libvirt disk_cachemodes

Output: Parameter not found: disk_cachemodes.

Note

The output may differ if only the file=writethrough was configured previously ("file=writethrough").

2. Change the policy from the default, that is empty string to " file=writethrough,network=writethrough":

crudini --set /var/lib/config-data/puppet-generated/nova_libvirt/etc/nova/nova.conf libvirt disk_cachemodes '"file=writethrough,network=writethrough"'

3. Restart all nova containers:

docker restart $(docker ps|grep nova|sed -r 's/^([^ ]+).*/\1/')

Output: 

353567574c0f
3fe492a36297
42f36e21555b
e727b8cf0191

4. Verify the changes in libvirtd:

virsh dumpxml instance-0000eb25 |grep "cache"

Output: 

<driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writethrough'/>

<driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writethrough' discard='unmap'/>

<driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writethrough' discard='unmap'/>

Note : To grep the instance id, execute "virsh list --all"

Example:

virsh list --all
Id Name State
----------------------------------------------------
1 instance-0000eb1c running
2 instance-0000eb25 running

5. Verify the changes in qemu:

Note

Before you verify the changes, ensure the instance is in running.

virsh qemu-monitor-command instance-0000eb25 --pretty '{"execute":"query-block"}'|egrep 'cache|device|filename|no-flush|direct|writeback'

Output:

"no-flush": false
"direct": false
"writeback": false

6. Check the disk cache in nova configuration on the compute host:

crudini --get /var/lib/config-data/puppet-generated/nova_libvirt/etc/nova/nova.conf libvirt disk_cachemodes

Output: 

"file=writethrough,network=writethrough"