Deploy SD-Core User Plane in DPDK mode¶

This guide covers how to deploy the User Plane Function (UPF) in DPDK mode using Terraform modules.

Requirements¶

A Kubernetes cluster which meets or exceeds below requirements:
- CPU supporting AVX2 and RDRAND and PDPE1GB instructions (Intel Haswell, AMD Excavator or equivalent)
- Kernel with SCTP protocol and vfio-pci driver support
- 4 cores
- SR-IOV interfaces for Access and Core networks
- At least two 1G HugePages available
- driverctl installed
- LoadBalancer with 1 available address for the UPF
- Multus CNI enabled
Juju >= 3.6/stable
A Juju controller bootstrapped onto the Kubernetes cluster
Terraform

Configure UPF host¶

Change the driver of the network interfaces to `vfio-pci`¶

As root user on the UPF host, load the vfio-pci driver:

echo "vfio-pci" > /etc/modules-load.d/vfio-pci.conf
modprobe vfio-pci

Note

Using vfio-pci, by default, needs IOMMU to be enabled. In the environments which do not support IOMMU, vfio-pci needs to be loaded with additional module parameter: echo "options vfio enable_unsafe_noiommu_mode=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/vfio-noiommu.conf

Get PCI address of access and core interfaces:

$ sudo lshw -c network -businfo
Bus info          Device           Class      Description
=========================================================
pci@0000:00:05.0  ens5             network    Elastic Network Adapter (ENA)
pci@0000:00:06.0  ens6             network    Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) # access interface
pci@0000:00:07.0  ens7             network    Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) # core interface

Bind access and core interfaces to the vfio-pci driver:

sudo driverctl set-override 0000:00:06.0 vfio-pci
sudo driverctl set-override 0000:00:07.0 vfio-pci

Configure Kubernetes for DPDK¶

Create ConfigMap with configuration for the SR-IOV Network Device Plugin:

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: sriovdp-config
  namespace: kube-system
data:
  config.json: |
    {
      "resourceList": [
        {
          "resourceName": "intel_sriov_vfio_access",
          "selectors": {
            "pciAddresses": ["0000:00:06.0"]
          }
        },
        {
          "resourceName": "intel_sriov_vfio_core",
          "selectors": {
            "pciAddresses": ["0000:00:07.0"]
          }
        }
      ]
    }
EOF

Deploy SR-IOV Network Device Plugin:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/k8snetworkplumbingwg/sriov-network-device-plugin/v3.6.2/deployments/sriovdp-daemonset.yaml

Copy the vfioveth CNI under /opt/cni/bin on Kubernetes host:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/cni/bin
sudo wget -O /opt/cni/bin/vfioveth https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opencord/omec-cni/master/vfioveth
sudo chmod +x /opt/cni/bin/vfioveth

Deploy SD-Core UPF Operator¶

Create a Juju model named user-plane:

juju add-model user-plane user-plane-cloud

Deploy sdcore-user-plane-k8s Terraform Module. Create an empty directory named terraform and create a main.tf file.

Note

All the addresses presented below serve as an example. Make sure to replace them with the values matching your setup. If Kubernetes host is a virtual machine rather than a Bare-metal server, set the enable-hw-checksum parameter in the upf_config to False.

mkdir terraform
cd terraform
cat << EOF > main.tf
module "sdcore-user-plane" {
  source = "git::https://github.com/canonical/terraform-juju-sdcore//modules/sdcore-user-plane-k8s?ref=v1.5"

  model = "user-plane"

  upf_config = {
    cni-type              = "vfioveth"
    upf-mode              = "dpdk"
    access-gateway-ip     = "10.202.0.1"
    access-ip             = "10.202.0.10/24"
    core-gateway-ip       = "10.203.0.1"
    core-ip               = "10.203.0.10/24"
    access-interface-mac-address = "c2:c8:c7:e9:cc:18"
    core-interface-mac-address = "e2:01:8e:95:cb:4d"
    enable-hw-checksum           = "false"
  }
}

EOF

Initialize the Juju Terraform provider:

terraform init

Deploy SD-Core User Plane:

terraform apply -auto-approve