NFVbench User Guide

The NFVbench tool provides an automated way to measure the network performance for the most common data plane packet flows on any OpenStack system. It is designed to be easy to install and easy to use by non experts (no need to be an expert in traffic generators and data plane performance testing).

Table of Content

• NFVbench: A Network Performance Benchmarking Tool for NFVi Full Stacks
  • Data Plane Performance Measurement Features
  • Built-in OpenStack support (optional)
  • External Chains
  • Direct L2 Loopback (Switch or wire loopback)
  • Traffic Generation
  • Supported Packet Paths
    • Loopback VM
  • Importance of Dense VNF Measurement
    • PVP Packet Path
    • PVVP Packet Path
    • Dense VNF or Multi-Chaining (N*PVP or N*PVVP)
    • SR-IOV
    • Other Misc Packet Paths
  • Supported Neutron Network Plugins and vswitches
    • Any Virtual Switch, Any Encapsulation
• Limitations
• Installation and Quick Start Guides
  • Requirements for running NFVbench
    • Hardware Requirements
    • Switch Configuration
    • Software Requirements
  • NFVbench Installation and Quick Start Guide
    • 1. Container installation
    • 2. NFVbench configuration file
    • 3. Starting NFVbench in CLI mode
    • 4. Start NFVbench in REST server mode
    • 7. Terminating the NFVbench container
• Example of Results
• Advanced Usage
  • How to change any NFVbench run configuration (CLI)
  • Showing the running configuration
  • Connectivity and Configuration Check
  • TRex force restart
    • Rate Units
  • Fixed Rate Run
  • NDR and PDR
  • Multichain
  • Multiflow
    • Examples of multiflow
  • Traffic Configuration via CLI
  • L2 loopback test via CLI
  • MAC Addresses
  • Status and Cleanup of NFVbench Resources
  • Service mode for TRex
  • Recording packet using service mode for TRex
  • User info data
• PVP L3 Router Internal Chain
• NFVbench Xtesting test cases and Xtesting CI integration
• NFVbench Xtesting test cases and existing CI chain
  • Override testcases.yaml file
  • Example of Xtesting test case
  • Examples of manual run
• MPLS encapsulation feature
• External Chains
  • Shared Edge Networks
  • Multi-VLAN Edge Networks
  • Detailed Example
• NFVbench Fluentd Integration
  • Configuring Fluentd to receive NFVbench logs and results
  • Configuring NFVbench to connect Fluentd
  • Example of logs and results
• NFVbench Kibana visualization: overview
  • Example of NFVbench visualizations
  • Import Kibana dashboards and visualization
• Kibana user guide: Filter dashboards and visualizations
  • Filter Kibana dashboard or visualization using Kibana query language (KQL)
  • Filter Kibana dashboard or visualization using Kibana filters
• Testing SR-IOV
  • Pre-requisites
  • Configuration
  • Multi-Chaining
  • NFVbench cores with SR-IOV
  • VM Flavor for SR-IOV and NIC NUMA socket placement
  • Example of configuration file (shared network)
  • Example of configuration file (non shared network)
• NFVbench Server mode and NFVbench client API
  • HTTP Interface
    • <http-url>/echo (GET)
    • <http-url>/status (GET)
    • <http-url>/start_run (POST)
  • NFVbench configuration JSON parameter
    • Default configuration
    • Common examples of JSON configuration
  • Example of interaction with the NFVbench server using HTTP and curl
  • Example of interaction with the NFVbench server using a python CLI app (nfvbench_client)
• Frequently Asked Questions
  • General Questions
    • Can NFVbench be used without OpenStack
    • Can NFVbench be used with a different traffic generator than TRex?
    • Can I connect Trex directly to my compute node?
    • Can I drive NFVbench using a REST interface?
    • Can I run NFVbench on a Cisco UCS-B series blade?
  • Troubleshooting
    • TrafficClientException: End-to-end connectivity cannot be ensured
    • Issues with high performances at a high line rate