Usage

To make use of the PowerVM drivers, a PowerVM system set up with NovaLink is required. The networking-powervm agent should be installed on the management VM. That agent code also is required to be installed on the Neutron controller as well.

The NovaLink architecture is such that the network agent runs directly on the PowerVM system. No external management element (e.g. Hardware Management Console or PowerVC) is needed. Management of the virtualization is driven through a thin virtual machine running on the PowerVM system.

Configuration of the PowerVM system and NovaLink is required ahead of time. The Shared Ethernet Adapters should be set up and configured beforehand. SR-IOV physical port labels must be set to the name of the neutron physical network to which they are cabled. For example, to associate SR-IOV physical port with location code U78C9.001.WZS094N-P1-C7-T2 with the neutron network named ‘prod_net’:

pvmctl sriov update --loc U78C9.001.WZS094N-P1-C7-T2 -s label=prod_net

Any un-labeled SR-IOV physical ports will be assumed to belong to the ‘default’ neutron physical network.

The operator does not need to add VLANs; those will be managed by the networking-powervm agent directly.

Configuration File Options

You must identify which mechanism driver(s) neutron should use. In the [ml2] section of the ML2 configuration file (e.g. /etc/neutron/plugins/ml2/ml2_conf.ini), the value of mechanism_drivers should be set to a comma-separated list of the desired drivers. The drivers provided by networking-powervm are:

  • pvm_sea: Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) mechanism driver.
  • pvm_sriov: SR-IOV mechanism driver for virtual NIC.

If using only pvm_sea and there is only a single Shared Ethernet Adapter (or adapter pair) using the default physical network, no further configuration is required (but see Optional Configuration below).

If using pvm_sriov, you must inform the compute driver which physical networks are allowed to be used by VMs. Each SR-IOV physical port must be labeled with its corresponding neutron network name as described in Usage above; and each authorized network must be listed in the passthrough_whitelist in the [pci] section of the nova configuration file (e.g. /etc/nova/nova.conf). For example, to authorize networks named default and prod_net, include the following in the nova configuration file:

[pci]
passthrough_whitelist = [{"physical_network": "default"}, {"physical_network": "prod_net"}]

Optional Configuration

The following options go in the [AGENT] section of the ML2 configuration file.

Configuration option = Default Value Agent Description
bridge_mappings = ‘’ SEA

(StrOpt) The Network Bridge mappings (defined by the SEA) that describe how the neutron physical networks map to the Shared Ethernet Adapters. This is required if using a network other than the default; or if using more than one SEA (or redundant SEA pair).

Format: <phnet1>:<sea1>:<vio1>,<phnet2>:<sea2>:<vio2> Example: default:ent5:vios_1,speedy:ent6:vios_1
automated_powervm_vlan_cleanup = True SEA Determines whether or not the VLANs will be removed from the Network Bridge if a VM is removed and it is the last VM on the system to use that VLAN. By default, the agent will clean up VLANs to improve the overall system performance (by reducing broadcast domain). Will only apply to VLANs not on the primary PowerVM virtual Ethernet adapter of the SEA.
vnic_required_vfs = 2 SRIOV (Integer) Redundancy level for the vNIC created to back an SR-IOV port. The value represents the number of SR-IOV logical ports to create (one per physical port). The binding will fail if the agent cannot find enough physical ports with sufficient free capacity to satisfy this setting.
vnic_vf_capacity = None SRIOV (Float) Value between 0.0000 and 1.0000 indicating the minimum guaranteed capacity of the VFs backing the SR-IOV vNIC. Must be a multiple of each physical port’s minimum capacity granularity, or the binding will fail. If unspecified, the platform defaults the capacity for each VF to its backing physical port’s minimum capacity granularity. [1]
heal_and_optimize_interval = 1800 ALL (Integer) The number of seconds the agent should wait between heal/optimize intervals.
exception_interval = 5 ALL (Integer) The number of seconds agent will wait between polling when exception is caught.
[1]For more details on SR-IOV logical port capacity, see section 1.3.3 of the IBM Power Systems SR-IOV Technical Overview and Introduction.

SR-IOV-Backed Neutron Port Creation

To create a neutron port on network with ID $netid that will be serviced by an SR-IOV vNIC:

neutron port-create --vnic-type direct $netid