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VPP Use_VPP_to_Chain_VMs_Using_Vhost_User_Interface

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Dave Wallace edited this page Apr 21, 2026 · 1 revision

In all of the examples described below we are connecting a physical interface to a vhost-user interface which is consumed either by a VM image or a Clear Container. The following startup.conf can be used for all of the examples.

unix {
  nodaemon
  log /var/log/vpp/vpp.log
  full-coredump
  cli-listen localhost:5002
}

api-trace {
  on
}

api-segment {
  gid vpp
}

cpu {
        main-core 1
        corelist-workers 2-6
}

dpdk {
        dev 0000:05:00.1
        dev 0000:05:00.2
        socket-mem 2048,0
        no-multi-seg
}

Note the devices described for DPDK, 05:00.1 and 05:00.2. These are specific to the given test setup, describing the NIC provided on the particular host.

Contents

QEMU Instance with two VPP Vhost-User Interfaces

For performance testing, a useful topology is to test between two physical intefaces and through a VM. In our first example, let's look at PHY-> Vhostuser VM -> L2FWD -> Vhostuser VM -> PHY. To achieve this, we'll need two things: a VM with two vhost user interfaces, and a DPDK enabled VM to run a simple port to port forwarding (such as testpmd).

Physical NIC to VM to Physical NIC setup

Setup of Network Components on Host

    1. View interfaces and put into 'up' state
vpp# show interfaces  
              Name               Idx       State          Counter          Count     
TenGigabitEthernet5/0/1           1         down      
TenGigabitEthernet5/0/2           2         down 

vpp# set interface state TenGigabitEthernet5/0/1 up

vpp# set interface state TenGigabitEthernet5/0/2 up

vpp# show interfaces  
              Name               Idx       State          Counter          Count     
TenGigabitEthernet5/0/1           1         up       
TenGigabitEthernet5/0/2           2         up
    1. Connect each physical interface to an L2 bridge
vpp# set interface l2 bridge TenGigabitEthernet5/0/1 1

vpp# set interface l2 bridge TenGigabitEthernet5/0/2 2
    1. Create, bring up and add vhost-user interfaces to L2 bridges
vpp# create vhost-user socket /var/run/vpp/sock1.sock server            
VirtualEthernet0/0/0

vpp# create vhost-user socket /var/run/vpp/sock2.sock server
VirtualEthernet0/0/1

vpp# set interface state VirtualEthernet0/0/0 up

vpp# set interface state VirtualEthernet0/0/1 up

vpp# set interface l2 bridge VirtualEthernet0/0/0 1

vpp# set interface l2 bridge VirtualEthernet0/0/1 2

vpp# show interface                             
              Name               Idx       State          Counter          Count     
TenGigabitEthernet5/0/1           1         up       
TenGigabitEthernet5/0/2           2         up       
VirtualEthernet0/0/0              3         up       
VirtualEthernet0/0/1              4         up       
local0                            0        down
    1. Show resulting bridge setup
vpp# show bridge 1 detail                       
  ID   Index   Learning   U-Forwrd   UU-Flood   Flooding   ARP-Term     BVI-Intf   
  1      1        on         on         on         on         off          N/A     

           Interface           Index  SHG  BVI  TxFlood        VLAN-Tag-Rewrite       
    TenGigabitEthernet5/0/1      1     0    -      *                 none             
     VirtualEthernet0/0/0        3     0    -      *                 none             

vpp# show bridge 2 detail                       
  ID   Index   Learning   U-Forwrd   UU-Flood   Flooding   ARP-Term     BVI-Intf   
  2      2        on         on         on         on         off          N/A     

           Interface           Index  SHG  BVI  TxFlood        VLAN-Tag-Rewrite       
    TenGigabitEthernet5/0/2      2     0    -      *                 none             
     VirtualEthernet0/0/1        4     0    -      *                 none

Launching VM to use VPP connections

taskset 3C0 qemu-system-x86_64  \
  -enable-kvm -m 8192 -smp cores=4,threads=0,sockets=1 -cpu host \
  -drive file="ubuntu-16.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img",if=virtio,aio=threads \
  -drive file="seed.img",if=virtio,aio=threads \
  -nographic -object memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=8192M,mem-path=/dev/hugepages,share=on \
  -numa node,memdev=mem \
  -mem-prealloc \
  -chardev socket,id=char1,path=/var/run/vpp/sock1.sock \
  -netdev type=vhost-user,id=net1,chardev=char1,vhostforce \
  -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net1,mac=00:00:00:00:00:01,csum=off,gso=off,guest_tso4=off,guest_tso6=off,guest_ecn=off,mrg_rxbuf=off \
  -chardev socket,id=char2,path=/var/run/vpp/sock2.sock \
  -netdev type=vhost-user,id=net2,chardev=char2,vhostforce \
  -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net2,mac=00:00:00:00:00:02,csum=off,gso=off,guest_tso4=off,guest_tso6=off,guest_ecn=off,mrg_rxbuf=off

Two Chained QEMU Instances with VPP Vhost-User Interfaces

Taking the prior example further, let's look at chaining two QEMU instances together so we have PHY VM VM PHY with connectivity provided by VPP L2 bridges. Since each bridge has only two interfaces attached to it, an optimization would be to make use of VPP L2 xconnect.

PHY to VM to VM to PHY setup

Setup of Networking Components on Host

# bring up the physical endpoints
sudo vppctl set interface state TenGigabitEthernet5/0/1 up
sudo vppctl set interface state TenGigabitEthernet5/0/2 up
sudo vppctl show interfaces

# connect each physical interface to an L2 bridge
sudo vppctl set interface l2 bridge TenGigabitEthernet5/0/1 1
sudo vppctl set interface l2 bridge TenGigabitEthernet5/0/2 3

# Create and bring up three vhost-user interfaces:
sudo vppctl create vhost-user socket /var/run/vpp/sock1.sock server
sudo vppctl create vhost-user socket /var/run/vpp/sock2.sock server
sudo vppctl create vhost-user socket /var/run/vpp/sock3.sock server
sudo vppctl create vhost-user socket /var/run/vpp/sock4.sock server
sudo vppctl set interface state VirtualEthernet0/0/0 up
sudo vppctl set interface state VirtualEthernet0/0/1 up
sudo vppctl set interface state VirtualEthernet0/0/2 up
sudo vppctl set interface state VirtualEthernet0/0/3 up

#Add virtual interfaces to L2 bridges:
sudo vppctl set interface l2 bridge VirtualEthernet0/0/0 1
sudo vppctl set interface l2 bridge VirtualEthernet0/0/1 2
sudo vppctl set interface l2 bridge VirtualEthernet0/0/2 2
sudo vppctl set interface l2 bridge VirtualEthernet0/0/3 3

#Show bridge setup:
show bridge-domains 1 detail
show bridge-domains 2 detail
show bridge-domains 3 detail

Launching VMs to use VPP Connections

  • Launch first VM in chain:
taskset 3c000 qemu-system-x86_64  \
  -enable-kvm -m 8192 -smp cores=4,threads=0,sockets=1 -cpu host \
  -drive file="ubuntu-16.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img",if=virtio,aio=threads \
  -drive file="seed.img",if=virtio,aio=threads \
  -nographic -object memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=8192M,mem-path=/dev/hugepages,share=on \
  -numa node,memdev=mem \
  -mem-prealloc \
  -chardev socket,id=char1,path=/var/run/vpp/sock1.sock \
  -netdev type=vhost-user,id=net1,chardev=char1,vhostforce \
  -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net1,mac=00:00:00:00:00:01,csum=off,gso=off,guest_tso4=off,guest_tso6=off,guest_ecn=off,mrg_rxbuf=off \
  -chardev socket,id=char2,path=/var/run/vpp/sock2.sock \
  -netdev type=vhost-user,id=net2,chardev=char2,vhostforce \
  -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net2,mac=00:00:00:00:00:02,csum=off,gso=off,guest_tso4=off,guest_tso6=off,guest_ecn=off,mrg_rxbuf=off
  • Launch second VM in chain:
taskset 3c00  qemu-system-x86_64  \
  -enable-kvm -m 8192 -smp cores=4,threads=0,sockets=1 -cpu host \
  -drive file="ubuntu-16.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img",if=virtio,aio=threads \
  -drive file="seed.img",if=virtio,aio=threads \
  -nographic -object memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=8192M,mem-path=/dev/hugepages,share=on \
  -numa node,memdev=mem \
  -mem-prealloc \
  -chardev socket,id=char1,path=/var/run/vpp/sock3.sock \
  -netdev type=vhost-user,id=net1,chardev=char1,vhostforce \
  -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net1,mac=00:00:00:00:00:03,csum=off,gso=off,guest_tso4=off,guest_tso6=off,guest_ecn=off,mrg_rxbuf=off \
  -chardev socket,id=char2,path=/var/run/vpp/sock4.sock \
  -netdev type=vhost-user,id=net2,chardev=char2,vhostforce \
  -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net2,mac=00:00:00:00:00:04,csum=off,gso=off,guest_tso4=off,guest_tso6=off,guest_ecn=off,mrg_rxbuf=off

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