Configuring Fabric and vRouter Communication through KNET-vNICs

Note: This feature is available only on Dell and whitebox platforms that do not have rear-facing NICs.

From Netvisor ONE 6.0.1 release onwards, Pluribus provides support for using KNET-vNIC as the OVS uplink from the CPU to OVS. The KNET exposes a standard network interface that is connected as an uplink port to OVS for forwarding fabric, cluster, or vRouter packets. This  implementation avoids copying of traffic between OVS and nvOSd and ensures direct transmission of fabric, cluster, and vRouter NIC packets between OVS and the CPU. Therefore, communication through KNET-vNICs results in improved CPU datapath performance.

To support cluster, fabric, and vRouter traffic using KNET-vNIC, you must enable KNET on Whitebox platforms that do not have rear-facing NICs by using the system-settings-modify command.

To enable or disable KNET, use the command:

CLI (network-admin@switch1) > system-settings-modify optimize-datapath disable|cluster-only|all

To view the existing configuration on a local switch, use the system-settings-show command:

CLI (network-admin@switch1) > system-settings-show format optimize-datapath

optimize-datapath: all

To view the settings on all the switches in the fabric, use the system-settings-show command prefixed with switch *  as below:

CLI (network-admin@switch1) > switch * system-settings-show format optimize-datapath

optimize-datapath: all

optimize-datapath: all

optimize-datapath: all  

optimize-datapath: all

optimize-datapath: all

optimize-datapath: all

optimize-datapath: all

Note: Pluribus recommends rebooting the switch by using the  switch-reboot command after running the system-settings-modify optimize-datapath command.