System Preparation

Hardware

Platform

Supports work on AMD and Intel platforms with x86-64 architecture.

AMD platforms require BIOS setup for optimal performance.

Hyper-threading

It is recommended to enable hyper-threading (HT) in the BIOS.

With HT enabled, the following command shows 2:

lscpu | grep 'Thread(s) per core:'

NUMA

Multiprocessor platforms are recommended to be used in NUMA mode with one processor per NUMA node. Platforms with one and two NUMA nodes are supported.

For optimal performance, it is recommended to spread NICs across different NUMA nodes so that each processor only works with ports on its own node.

Find out the NUMA node of a device by its PCI address:

cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:04:00.0/numa_node

Drivers (kernel modules)

For Intel network cards and some others, a driver (kernel module) must be loaded on the system to allow DPDK to work with them. Mellanox (NVIDIA) cards do not require kernel modules to be loaded.

Required:

1. Select a driver for installed network devices (DPDK documentation):

   • Mellanox (NVIDIA) cards only work with its own driver.
   • vfio-pci: default, recommended by default (see below);
   • uio_pci_generic: default, used instead of vfio-pci, if it doesn’t work (see below);
   • igb_uio: non-standard, only needed if other drivers do not work (see below).

2. Set up driver loading at system start.

Driver management

Binding devices to the desired driver is done through the dpdk-devbind script (DPDK documentation).

Download and install dpdk-devbind:

wget https://docs.mitigator.ru/v23.12/dist/dpdk-devbind -O /usr/local/bin/dpdk-devbind
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/dpdk-devbind

View the status of network devices and available drivers:

dpdk-devbind --status-dev=net

The Network devices using DPDK-compatible driver list contains devices bound to a DPDK-compatible driver. The Network devices using kernel driver list contains devices with standard kernel drivers. The current driver is listed in the drv= field. Available drivers are listed in the unused= field. Only the drivers that are loaded on the system are displayed.

If the required driver is not loaded, load via modprobe. For example, to load the vfio-pci driver:

modprobe vfio-pci

You can match the device name (for example, eth0 or enp3s0f0) and its PCI address using the if= field in the dpdk-devbind output.

It is recommended to bind all devices with the same dpdk-devbind command. To work with vfio-pci, all ports on one card must be bound to the same driver. For example, to bind 06:00.0 and 06:00.1 devices to the vfio-pci driver:

dpdk-devbind -b vfio-pci 06:00.0 06:00.1

Automatic loading of the kernel module

If the required kernel module is not loaded by default at system startup, it can be enabled via /etc/modules-load.d. For example, to load vfio-pci:

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

vfio-pci module

The vfio-pci module is a part of the Linux kernel. Required for DPDK to work with network cards. Requires processor support for I/O virtualization (Intel VT-d or AMD-V). Enable in the BIOS with relevant settings (for example, “VT-d”, “Intel Virtualization Technology”, “AMD-V”, “AMD Virtualization”, “SVM”, “IOMMU”).

Add options to the kernel parameters (for example, using GRUB):

intel_iommu=on iommu=pt

Check for virtualization support:

grep -q 'vmx\|svm' /proc/cpuinfo && echo enabled || echo disabled

Check for IOMMU support:

compgen -G '/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/*/devices/*' > /dev/null && echo enabled || echo disabled

Module loading:

modprobe vfio-pci

uio_pci_generic module

The uio_pci_generic module is part of the Linux kernel. It is used in place of vfio-pci if it is not supported by the system or does not work for some reason.

Module loading:

modprobe uio_pci_generic

igb_uio module

The igb_uio module can be used as an alternative to other modules if they don’t work.

Module installation:

apt install -y dpdk-igb-uio-dkms

apt install -y dpdk-kmods-dkms

Module loading:

modprobe igb_uio

Hugepages

MITIGATOR requires configured hugepages (large memory pages). Hugepages of various sizes (2 MB, 1 GB) may be supported by the platform. It is recommended to configure hugepages of larger size (1 GB).

The required number of hugepages depends on the desired number of protection policies. It is recommended to allocate 50-75% of the total memory to hugepages.

1 GB hugepages

It is recommended to use 1 GB hugepages if supported by the platform. They can only be allocated at system boot.

Check support:

grep -q pdpe1gb /proc/cpuinfo && echo supported || echo not supported

Configured by adding options to the kernel parameters. Example of allocating 64 pages of 1 GB size:

default_hugepagesz=1G hugepagesz=1G hugepages=64

2 MB hugepages

2 MB hugepages must be used only if 1 GB hugepages are not supported by the platform, for example, in virtualized environment. They can be configured without a system reboot.

Example of allocating 2048 pages of 2 MB size:

sysctl -w vm.nr_hugepages=2048

Example of setting up the allocation of hugepages at system boot:

echo 'vm.nr_hugepages = 2048' > /etc/sysctl.d/hugepages.conf

Docker

Install Docker from the distributive repositories:

apt install -y docker.io

apt-get install -y docker-engine

dnf install -y docker-ce

systemctl enable --now docker

Install Docker Compose from the official repository and make the binary executable:

curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.29.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/bin/docker-compose
chmod +x /usr/bin/docker-compose

Official Docker and Docker Compose installation guides:

• Docker
• Docker Compose