QoS minimum guaranteed packet rate¶

https://bugs.launchpad.net/neutron/+bug/1922237

Similarly to how bandwidth can be a limiting factor of a network interface, packet processing capacity tend to be a limiting factor of the soft switching solutions like OVS. In the same time certain applications are dependent on not just guaranteed bandwidth but also on guaranteed packet rate to function properly. OpenStack already supports bandwidth guarantees via the minimum bandwidth QoS policy rules. This specification is aiming for adding support for a similar minimum packet rate QoS policy rule.

To add support for the new QoS rule type both Neutron and Nova needs to be extended. This specification only focuses on the Neutron impact. For the high level view and for the Nova specific impact please read the Nova specification.

Problem Description¶

Currently there are several parameters, quantitative and qualitative, that define a VM and are used to select the correct host and network backend devices to run it. The packet processing capacity of the soft switching solution (like OVS) could also be such a parameter that affects the placement of new workload.

This spec focuses on managing the packet processing capacity of the soft switch (like OVS) running on the hypervisor host serving the VM. Managing packet processing capacity in other parts of the networking backend (like in Top-Of-Rack switches) are out of scope.

Guaranteeing packet processing capacity generally involves enforcement of constraints on two levels.

placement: Avoiding over-subscription when placing (scheduling) VMs and their ports.
data plane: Enforcing the guarantee on the soft switch

This spec addresses placement enforcement only. Data plane enforcement can be developed later. When the packet rate limit policy rule feature is implemented then a basic data plane enforcement can be applied by adding both minimum and maximum packet rate QoS rules to the same QoS policy where maximum limit is set to be equal to the minimum guarantee.

Use cases¶

I as an administrator want to define the maximum packet rate, in kilo packet per second (kpps), my OVS soft switch capable of handle per compute node, so that I can avoid overload on OVS.

I as an end user want to define the minimum packet rate, in kilo packet per second (kpps) a Neutron port needs to provide to my VM, so that my application using the port can work as expected.

I as an administrator want to get a VM with such ports placed on a compute node that can still provide the requested minimum packet rate for the Neutron port so that the application will get what it requested.

I as an administrator want that the VM lifecycle operations are rejected in case the requested minimum packet rate guarantee of the Neutron ports of the server cannot be fulfilled on any otherwise eligible compute nodes, so that the OVS overload is avoided and application guarantees are kept.

Proposed Change¶

Note

For the high level solution including the impact and interactions between Nova, Neutron and Placement see the Nova specification.

This feature is similar to the already supported minimum bandwidth QoS policy rules. So this spec describes the impact in relation to the already introduced concepts and implementation while also pointing out key differences.

The solution needs to differentiate between two deployment scenarios.

The packet processing functionality is implemented on the compute host CPUs and therefore packets processed from both ingress and egress directions are handled by the same set of CPU cores. This is the case in the non-hardware-offloaded OVS deployments. In this scenario OVS represents a single packet processing resource pool. Which can be represented with a single new resource class, NET_PACKET_RATE_KILOPACKET_PER_SEC.
The packet processing functionality is implemented in a specialized hardware where the incoming and outgoing packets are handled by independent hardware resources. This is the case for hardware-offloaded OVS. In this scenario a single OVS has two independent resource pools one for the incoming packets and one for the outgoing packets. Therefore these needs to be represented with two new resource classes NET_PACKET_RATE_EGR_KILOPACKET_PER_SEC and NET_PACKET_RATE_IGR_KILOPACKET_PER_SEC.

OVS packet processing capacity¶

Neutron OVS agent needs to provide a configuration options for the administrator to define the maximum packet processing capability of the OVS per compute node. This means the following new configuration options are added to OVS agent configuration:

[ovs]
# Comma-separated list of <hypervisor>:<packet_rate> tuples, defining the
# minimum packet rate the OVS backend can guarantee in kilo (1000) packet
# per second. The hypervisor name is used to locate the parent of the
# resource provider tree. Only needs to be set in the rare case when the
# hypervisor name is different from the DEFAULT.host config option value as
# known by the nova-compute managing that hypervisor or if multiple
# hypervisors are served by the same OVS backend.
# The default is :0 which means no packet processing capacity is guaranteed
# on the hypervisor named according to DEFAULT.host.
# resource_provider_packet_processing_without_direction = :0
#
# Similar to the resource_provider_packet_processing_without_direction but
# used in case the OVS backend has hardware offload capabilities. In this a
# case the format is
# <hypervisor>:<egress_packet_rate>:<ingress_packet_rate> which allows
# defining packet processing capacity per traffic direction. The direction
# is meant from the VM perspective. Note that the
# resource_provider_packet_processing_without_direction and the
# resource_provider_packet_processing_with_direction
# are mutually exclusive options.
# resource_provider_packet_processing_with_direction = :0:0
#
# Key:value pairs to specify defaults used while reporting packet rate
# inventories. Possible keys with their types: allocation_ratio:float,
# max_unit:int, min_unit:int, reserved:int, step_size:int
# resource_provider_packet_processing_inventory_defaults = {
#   'allocation_ratio': 1.0, 'min_unit': 1, 'step_size': 1, 'reserved': 0}

Note

Note that while bandwidth inventory is defined per OVS bridge in the [ovs]resource_provider_bandwidths configuration option, the packet processing capacity is applied globally to the whole OVS instance.

Note

Note that to support both OVS deployment scenarios there are two mutually exclusive configuration options. One to handle the normal OVS deployments with directionless resource inventories and one to handle hardware-offloaded OVS deployments with direction aware resource inventories.

The configurations field of the OVS agent heartbeat RPC message is extended to report the packet processing capacity configuration to the Neutron server. If the hypervisor name is omitted from the configuration it is resolved to the value of [DEFAULT]host in the RPC message.

The Neutron server reports the packet processing capacity as the new NET_PACKET_RATE_KILOPACKET_PER_SEC or NET_PACKET_RATE_[E|I]GR_KILOPACKET_PER_SEC resource inventory on the OVS agent resource provider (RP) to Placement in a similarly way how the bandwidth resource is reported today. Now that the OVS agent RP has resource inventory the Neutron server also needs to report the same CUSTOM_VNIC_TYPE_ traits on the OVS agent RP as reported on the bridge RPs. These are the vnic types this agent configured to support. Note that CUSTOM_PHYSNET_ traits are not needed for the packet rate scheduling as this resource is not split between the available physnets.

Note

Regarding the alternative of reporting the resources on the OVS bridge level instead, please see the Nova specification

Minimum packet rate QoS policy rule¶

A new Neutron API extension is needed to extend the QoS API with the new minimum_packet_rate rule type. This rule has a similar structure and semantic as the minimum_bandwidth rule:

qos_apidef.SUB_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTE_MAP = {
    'minimum_packet_rate_rules': {
        'parent': qos_apidef._PARENT,
        'parameters': {
            qos_apidef._QOS_RULE_COMMON_FIELDS,
            'min_kpps': {
                'allow_post': True,
                'allow_put': True,
                'convert_to': converters.convert_to_int,
                'is_visible': True,
                'is_filter': True,
                'is_sort_key': True,
                'validate': {
                    'type:range': [0, db_const.DB_INTEGER_MAX_VALUE]}
            },
            'direction': {
                'allow_post': True,
                'allow_put': True,
                'is_visible': True,
                'default': constants.EGRESS_DIRECTION,
                'validate': {
                    'type:values': (
                        constants.ANY_DIRECTION,
                        constants.INGRESS_DIRECTION,
                        constants.EGRESS_DIRECTION
                    )
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

The direction, ingress or egress of the rule is considered from the Nova server’s perspective. So an 1 kpps ingress guarantee means the system ensures that at least 1000 packets can enter the VM via the given port per second.

To support the two different OVS deployment scenarios we need to allow that the direction field of the new QoS policy rule to be set to any to indicate that this QoS rule is valid in the normal OVS case where the resource accounting is directionless.

Mixing direction aware and directionless minimum packet rate rules in the same QoS policy will always result in a NoValidHost error during scheduling as no single OVS instance can have both direction aware and directionless inventory at the same time. Therefore such rule creation will be rejected by the Neutron server with HTTP 400.

Note

For the alternative about having only direction aware QoS rule types see the Nova specification

The above definition allows the min_kpps value to be updated with a PUT request. This request will be rejected with HTTP 501 if the rule is already used in a bound port similarly to the minimum bandwidth rule behavior.

Neutron provides the necessary information to the admin clients via the resource_request of the port to allow the client to keep the placement resource allocation consistent and therefore implement the schedule time guarantee. Nova will use this information to do so. However neither Neutron nor Nova can enforce that another client, which can bound ports also properly allocates resources for those ports. This is out of scope.

This results in the following new API resources and operations:

GET /v2.0/qos/policies/{policy_id}/minimum_packet_rate_rules

List minimum packet rate rules for QoS policy

Response:

{
  "minimum_packet_rate_rules": [
      {
          "id": "5f126d84-551a-4dcf-bb01-0e9c0df0c793",
          "min_kpps": 1000,
          "direction": "egress"
      }
  ]
}

POST /v2.0/qos/policies/{policy_id}/minimum_packet_rate_rules

Create minimum packet rate rule

Request:

{
  "minimum_packet_rate_rule": {
      "min_kpps": 1000,
      "direction": "any",
  }
}

Response:

{
  "minimum_packet_rate_rule": {
      "id": "5f126d84-551a-4dcf-bb01-0e9c0df0c793",
      "min_kpps": 1000,
      "direction": "any"
  }
}

GET /v2.0/qos/policies/{policy_id}/minimum_packet_rate_rules/{rule_id}

Show minimum packet rate rule details

Response:

{
  "minimum_packet_rate_limit_rule": {
      "id": "5f126d84-551a-4dcf-bb01-0e9c0df0c793",
      "min_kpps": 1000,
      "direction": "egress"
  }
}

PUT /v2.0/qos/policies/{policy_id}/minimum_packet_rate_rules/{rule_id}

Update minimum packet rate rule

Request:

{
  "minimum_packet_rate_rule": {
      "min_kpps": 2000,
      "direction": "any",
  }
}

Response:

{
  "minimum_packet_rate_rule": {
      "id": "5f126d84-551a-4dcf-bb01-0e9c0df0c794",
      "min_kpps": 2000,
      "direction": "any",
  }
}

DELETE /v2.0/qos/policies/{policy_id}/minimum_packet_rate_rules/{rule_id}

Delete minimum packet rate rule

Note

This spec intentionally does not propose the addition of the old style /v2.0/qos/policies/{policy_id}/minimum_packet_rate_rules/{rule_id} APIs as Neutron team prefers the /v2.0/qos/alias_bandwidth_limit_rules/{rule_id} style APIs in the future. The old style APIs only kept for backwards compatibility for already existing QoS rules. However as this new API will not have an old style counterpart the ‘alias’ prefix is removed from the resource name.

To persist the new QoS rule type a new DB table qos_minimum_packet_rate_rules is needed:

op.create_table(
    'qos_minimum_packet_rate_rules',
    sa.Column('id', sa.String(36), nullable=False,
              index=True),
    sa.Column('qos_policy_id', sa.String(36),
              nullable=False, index=True),
    sa.Column('min_kpps', sa.Integer()),
    sa.Column('direction', sa.Enum(constants.ANY_DIRECTION,
                                   constants.EGRESS_DIRECTION,
                                   constants.INGRESS_DIRECTION,
                                   name="directions"),
              nullable=False,
              server_default=constants.EGRESS_DIRECTION),
    sa.PrimaryKeyConstraint('id'),
    sa.ForeignKeyConstraint(['qos_policy_id'], ['qos_policies.id'],
                            ondelete='CASCADE')
)

This also means a new QosMinimumPacketRateRule DB model and OVO are added.

Request packet rate resources¶

Today the resource_request field of the Neutron port is used to express the resource needs of the port. The information in this field is calculated from the QoS policy rules attached to the port. So far only the minimum bandwidth rule is used as a source of the requested resources. However both the structure and the actual logic calculating the value of this field needs to be changed when the new minimum packet rate rule is added as an additional source of the requested resources.

Currently resource_request is structured like:

{
    "required": [<CUSTOM_PHYSNET_ traits>, <CUSTOM_VNIC_TYPE traits>],
    "resources":
    {
        <NET_BW_[E|I]GR_KILOBIT_PER_SEC resource class name>:
        <requested bandwidth amount from the QoS policy>
    }
},

The current structure only allows describing one group of resources and traits. However as described above the packet processing resource inventory is reported on the OVS agent RP while the bandwidth resources are reported on the OVS bridge RP. This also means that requesting these resources needs to be separated as one group of resources always allocated from a single RP in placement.

Therefore the following structure is proposed for the resource_request field:

{
    "request_groups":
    [
        {
            "id": <some unique identifier string of the group>
            "required": [<CUSTOM_VNIC_TYPE traits>],
            "resources":
            {
                NET_PACKET_RATE_[E|I]GR_KILOPACKET_PER_SEC:
                <amount requested via the QoS policy>
            }
        },
        {
            "id": <some unique identifier string of the group>
            "required": [<CUSTOM_PHYSNET_ traits>,
                         <CUSTOM_VNIC_TYPE traits>],
            "resources":
            {
                <NET_BW_[E|I]GR_KILOBIT_PER_SEC resource class name>:
                <requested bandwidth amount from the QoS policy>
            }
        },
    ]
}

Each dict in the list represents one group of resources and traits that needs to be fulfilled from a single resource provider. E.g. either from the bridge RP in case of bandwidth, or the OVS agent RP in case of packet rate. This solves the problem of the RP separation. However in the other hand a port still needs to allocate resources from the same overall entity, e.g. from OVS, by allocating packet processing capacity from the OVS agent RP and bandwidth from one of the OVS bridge RPs. In other words it is invalid to fulfill the packet processing request from OVS and the bandwidth request from an SRIOV PF managed by the SRIOV agent. In the placement model the OVS bridge RPs are the children of the OVS agent RP while the PF RPs are not. So placement already aware of the structural connections between the resource inventories. Still by default, when two groups of resources are requested Placement only enforces that they are fulfilled from two RPs in the same RP tree but it does not enforce any subtree relationship between those RPs. To express that the two groups of resources should be fulfilled from two RPs in the same subtree (in our case from the subtree rooted by the OVS agent RP) placement needs extra information in the request. Placement supports a same_subtree parameter that can express what we need. Neutron needs to add a new top level key same_subtree to the resource_request dict. I.e.:

{
    "request_groups":
    [
        {
            "id": "port-request-group-due-to-min-pps",
            # ...
        },
        {
            "id": "port-request-group-due-to-min-bw",
            # ...
        },
    ],
    "same_subtree":
    [
        "port-request-group-due-to-min-pps",
        "port-request-group-due-to-min-bw"
    ]
}

The id field is a string that is assumed to be unique for each group of each port in a neutron deployment. To achieve this a new UUID will be generated for each group by combining the port_id and UUIDs of the QoS rules contributing to the group via the UUID5 method. This way we get a unique and deterministic id for the group so we don’t need to persist the group id in Neutron.

We discussed and rejected another two alternatives:

Ignore the same subtree problem for now. The QoS configuration already requires the admin to create a setup where the different mechanism drivers support disjunct set of vnic_type s via the vnic_type_prohibit_list config option. A port always requests a specific vnic_type and the supported vnic_type s are disjunct therefore the port’s resource request always selects a specific networking backend via the CUSTOM_VNIC_TYPE_ traits. Support for packet rate resource is only added to the OVS backend, therefore if the scheduling of a port’s resource request, containing both packet rate and bandwidth resource, succeeds then we know that the packet rate resource is fulfilled by the OVS agent RP. Therefore the vnic_type matched the OVS backend. The bandwidth request also fulfilled from a backend with the same vnic_type so it is also fulfilled from the OVS backend. If we go with this direction then special care needs to be taken to document the above assumption carefully so that future developers can check if any of the statements become invalid due to new feature additions.

Make an assumption in Nova that every request group from a single port always needs to be fulfilled from the same subtree. Then the same_subtree key is not needed in the resource_request but Nova will implicitly assume that it is there and generate the placement request accordingly.

The selected alternative is more future proof. When the IP allocation pool handling are transformed to use the resource request, that resource will come from a sharing resource provider and therefore Nova cannot implicitly assume same_subtree for the whole resource_request.

Note that the current neutron API does not define the exact structure of the field, it is just a dict, so from Neutron perspective there is no need for a new API extension to change the structure. However Nova needs to know which format will be used by Neutron. We have alternatives:

A new Neutron API extension: It can signal the change of the API. Nova already use to check the extension list to see if some feature is enabled in Neutron or not.
A new top level resource_request_version field in the resource_request dict can signal the current and future versions. Nova would need to check if the field exists in resource_request and conditionally parse the rest of the dict.
Let Nova guess based on the structure. The new top level request_groups key can be used in Nova to detect the new format.

The API extension is the selected alternative as that feels like the standard way in Neutron to signal API change.

Port binding¶

Today Nova sends the UUID of the resource provider the port’s resource_request is fulfilled from in the allocation key of the binding:profile. The port binding logic uses this information to bind the port to the same physical device or OVS bridge the port’s resources are allocated from. This is necessary as it is allowed to have multiple such devices that are otherwise equivalent from Neutron perspective, i.e. they are connected to the same physnet and supporting the same vnic_type. When the port has two groups of resource requests (one for bandwidth and the other for packet rate) the resource allocation is fulfilled from more than one RPs. To support that we need to change the structure of the allocation key. As every group of resources in the resource_request now has a uniq identifier Nova can send a mapping of <group.id>: <RP.uuid> back in the allocaton key of binding:profile so that Neutron gets informed about which RP provided which group of resources. This means the following structure in the allocation key:

{
    <uniq id of the group requesting min_pps>:
        <OVS agent RP UUID>,
    <uniq id of the group requesting min_bw>:
        <OVS bridge RP UUID or SRIOV PF RP UUID>,
}

Only those group id keys are present in this dict that are present in the resource_request field as id.

Alternatively we could ignore the problem for now. Only OVS supports packet rate inventory for now and the packet rate inventory is global for the whole OVS instance. A single binding:host_id always maps to a single OVS instance, so Neutron can always assume that the minimum packet rate resource are allocated from the OVS agent resource provider that belongs to the compute node the port is requested to bound to. So the UUID of the packet rate resource provider is not needed of the port binding logic. Therefore the allocation key can be kept to only communicate the UUID of the bandwidth resource provider if any.

QoS policy change on bound port¶

Neutron supports changing the QoS policy on a bound port even if this means that resource allocation change is needed due to changes in the resource request indicated by the minimum_bandwidth QoS rule. This implementation needs to be extended to handle changes not just in minimum_bandwidth but also in minimum_packet_rate rule.

The current support matrix is:

Current scenarios¶
Scenario	Result
Update the port.qos_policy_id from None to valid QoS policy with minimum bandwidth rule	Accepted but the resource allocation is not adjusted as that would require a full scheduling. If the VM later scheduled to another host (i.e. migrated, resize, evacuated) then that scheduling will consider the new resource request.
Update the port.qos_policy_id from a QoS policy without minimum bandwidth rule to a QoS policy with minimum bandwidth rule	Accepted but the resource allocation is not adjusted. See above.
Update the port.qos_policy_id from a QoS policy with minimum bandwidth rule to a QoS policy with minimum bandwidth rule but with different min_kbps value or different direction.	Supported. Accepted if the bandwidth allocation on the current resource provider can be updated with the new QoS value and direction.
Update the port.qos_policy_id from a QoS policy with minimum bandwidth rule to a QoS policy without minimum bandwidth rule.	Supported. The bandwidth resource allocation for this port in placement is deleted.

After the minimum packet rate rule is added Neutron will have two QoS policy rules that requires placement resources allocation. This adds more possible cases to handle. The above scenarios still apply for minimum bandwidth and can be applied similarly to QoS policy with a single minimum packet rate rule. The more complex cases are described below:

New scenarios¶
Scenario	Result
The old QoS policy has both minimum bandwidth and packet rate rules, the new policy also has both rules but with different min_kbps and / or min_kpps values.	Supported. Accepted if the bandwidth allocation on the current resource providers can be updated with the new QoS values. Changing the direction of the minimum bandwidth rule or the direction of the direction aware minimum packet rate rule is also supported. However changing from a direction less minimum packet rate rule to a direction aware packet rate rule, or vice versa, is not supported and rejected.
The old QoS policy has both minimum bandwidth and packet rate rules, the new policy has less rules. Either just minimum bandwidth or just minimum packet rate or none of them.	Supported. The allocation related to the removed rule(s) are deleted in placement.
The new QoS policy adds either minimum bandwidth or packet rate rule or both compared to the old policy.	Accepted but the resource allocation is not adjusted as that would require a full scheduling. If the VM later scheduled to another host (i.e. migrated, resize, evacuated) then that scheduling will consider the resource request of the new rule(s).

Upgrade¶

A database schema upgrade is needed to add the new qos_minimum_packet_rate_rules table.

The changes in the Neutron server - OVS agent communication means that during rolling upgrade upgraded OVS agents might send the new packet processing capacity related keys in the hearthbeat while old agents will not send it. So Neutron server needs to consider this new key as optional.

The manipulation of the new minimum_packet_rate QoS policy rule and changes in the resource_request and allocation fields of the port requires a new API extension. We need to support upgrade scenarios where the Neutron is already upgraded to Yoga but Nova still on Xena version. However this does not require any additional logic in Neutron as Nova already landed support this API extension in Xena.

Testing¶

Unit tests.
Functional tests: agent-server interactions.
Tempest scenario tests: End-to-end feature test.

Documentation¶

Update the generic QoS admin guide
A new admin guide, similar to the one for minimum bandwidth

References¶

The Nova specification
The already supported minimum bandwidth QoS policy rules serving as a pattern for the new minimum packet rate QoS policy rule.

QoS minimum guaranteed packet rate

QoS minimum guaranteed packet rate¶

Problem Description¶

Use cases¶

Proposed Change¶

OVS packet processing capacity¶

Minimum packet rate QoS policy rule¶

Request packet rate resources¶

Port binding¶

QoS policy change on bound port¶

Upgrade¶

Testing¶

Documentation¶

References¶

neutron-specs 0.0.1.dev832

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