1. Overview¶
Thank you for choosing 6WIND Host Network Accelerator.
6WIND Host Accelerators optimize virtual and cloud-native function (VNF/CNF) performance, ensuring enhanced efficiency and scalability in network environments. The 6WIND Host Accelerator product suite comprises of Host Network Accelerator (HNA) and Virtual Accelerator (VA), delivering: - High Performance - Low latency - Improved resources sharing - Higher efficiency
The 6WIND Virtual Host Network Accelerator (vHNA) is designed to facilitate the cloud-native transformation of service providers’ networks. It provides routing capabilities at the host level of Kubernetes nodes, enhancing network security through finer-grained access controls and network segment isolation.
This document will help you get started with your new product. It provides an overview as well as detailed installation and startup instructions.
1.1. Features¶
Host Network Accelerator offers:
Complete integration into Kubernetes workflow
Enhanced routing capabilities
IP/MPLS/SR support
VLAN/VxLAN support
High Performance
1.1.1. Routing¶
BGP, BGP4+
OSPFv2, OSPFv3
RIP, RIPng
IS-IS
SR-TE
PCEP
SRv6
PIM SM and SSM
cross-VRF
Static Routes
Path monitoring
ECMP
PBR
BFD
MPLS LDP
BGP L3VPN
VXLAN EVPN
Point to Multipoint GRE interfaces
NHRP
DMVPN with IPsec
Weighted ECMP support (Unequal Cost Multipath)
BGP EVPN filtering
BGP EVPN RT5
1.1.2. Layer 2 and Encapsulations¶
GRE
VLAN (802.1Q, QinQ)
VXLAN
LAG (802.3ad, LACP)
Ethernet Bridge
1.1.3. IP Networking¶
IPv4 and IPv6
IPv6 Autoconfiguration
VRF
IPv4 and IPv6 Tunneling
NAT
ECMP inner VXLAN hash support
1.1.4. QoS¶
Rate limiting per interface, per VRF
Class-based QoS
Classification: ToS / IP / DSCP / CoS
Shaping and Policing
Scheduling: PQ, PB-DWRR, HTB
Fair Queuing: SFQ
Ingress hardware-assisted based on DSCP
1.1.5. IP Services¶
DHCP v4 client
DHCP v4 server
DHCP v4 relay
DHCP v6 client
DNS client
DNS proxy
NTP
1.1.6. Management/Monitoring¶
SSHv2
CLI
NETCONF / YANG API
SNMP
KPIs / Telemetry (YANG-based)
Data streaming: InfluxDB, Elastic Search, Kafka, Amazon CloudWatch, Graphite
Role-Based Access Control with AAA (TACACS, Radius)
Syslog
802.1ab LLDP
sFlow
Netflow / IPFIX
BMP
Netconf alarms based on Yang push
Audit Trail
Custom user roles with TACACS
Custom user roles with Radius
CBOR format for Yang Push (RFC 8949)
Netconf / SNMP alert capability using thresholds
1.1.7. Operations¶
Licensing: online licensing system with flexible feature and capacity enablement
1.1.8. Power consumption¶
Eco mode leveraging cpu frequency scaling according to workload
1.2. System Requirements¶
A container engine (Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, …)
Virtio vNIC, PCI passthrough and SR-IOV
Supported processors
Intel Xeon Platinum/Gold/Silver family Ice Lake*
Intel Xeon Platinum/Gold/Silver family Sapphire Rapids*
Intel Xeon Platinum/Gold/Silver family Emerald Rapids
AMD Epyc 4 Genoa and Siena*
Supported Ethernet NICs
Intel 10G 82599*, X520*, X540, X550* (ixgbe)
Intel 10G/40G X710*, XL710*, X722, XXV710* (i40e)
Intel 25G*/100G* E810 (ice)
Mellanox 10G*/25G*/40G*/50G/100G* ConnectX- 4/5/6 (mlx5)
Mellanox 200G ConnectX-7 (mlx5)
Note: marked references (*) on processors and NICs are fully integrated in 6WIND’s CI with a wide functional and performance test coverage.
Memory footprint
To run Host Network Accelerator, we recommend at least 6GB of hugepages, 2GB of standard memory, and 512MB of POSIX shared memory. The minimum requirements are 1GB of hugepages, 1GB of standard memory, and 64MB of POSIX shared memory.
Host Network Accelerator requires 8G of RAM to achieve the following capabilities:
VRs
32
Routes
1000000
Next-hops
200000
Neighbors
10300
PBR rules
4096
VXLAN interfaces
512
See also
Fast path limits configuration to tune these capabilities.
CPU: Host Network Accelerator requires at least 2 CPU cores.