1.2.1. Prerequisites

Prior to installation, you need to connect to the 6WIND Customer Zone and download:

  • The 6WIND credentials package, to access the 6WIND repository,
  • or the 6WIND Virtual Accelerator software packages, if you prefer to use a local repository.
  • Your license file, to enable running Virtual Accelerator for an unlimited amount of time.

Note

You may use Virtual Accelerator without a license file, for a limited amount of time.

Linux distribution

  1. Disable SELinux:

    # setenforce 0
# sed -i "s,SELINUX=enforcing,SELINUX=disabled," /etc/selinux/config

  2. Virtual Accelerator installs some kernel modules. To ensure that those modules will work on any kernel version, DKMS is used to recompile them dynamically. DKMS depends on the kernel headers package of the distribution. Please run the following command to install the appropriate packages:

    # yum install kernel-headers-$(uname -r) kernel-devel-$(uname -r)

  3. dkms is available as part of Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (epel) repository. This repository must be enabled:

    # yum install epel-release

    Note

    More information on the epel website: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

QEMU and libvirt

Virtual Accelerator needs at least libvirt 1.2.17.13.el7_2.2 and QEMU 2.3.0-31.el7_2.4 to run.

Although QEMU works well, it is not fully up to date with regards to the latest QEMU patches for the following features:

  • vhost-user interruption fixes, needed for VMs under heavy load
  • suspend / resume vhost-user multiqueue fixes

In order to support these features, 6WIND provides an early technology access build of QEMU.

  1. Early technology access builds are provided through 6WIND’s repository:

    Note

    This step is optional, the QEMU from the OSP channels can be used, provided its version is higher than 2.3.0-31.el7_2.4, and given the limitations stated before.

    # yum install -y http://repo.6wind.com/rpm/6wind-public-1.0-1.noarch.rpm

  2. Install the following packages:

    # yum install -y qemu-kvm-rhev libvirt libvirt-python

  3. Start libvirt:

    # systemctl start libvirtd

  4. Remove the libvirt default network:

    # virsh net-destroy default
# virsh net-undefine default

Note

Please check http://repo.6wind.com/rpm/ for more information, including the patches used, and the reference version on which these patches have been applied.

Other prerequisites

Mellanox ConnectX-3 EN series and Mellanox ConnectX-4 EN series NICs

Drivers for these NICs require up-to-date firmware versions.

These are available for download from the Mellanox website, either using the mlxup tool, or through the latest Mellanox OFED for your Linux distribution.

Mellanox does not provide firmware releases for all OEM products, these are distributed by OEMs directly.

Note

In order to avoid installation conflicts, make sure Mellanox OFED itself is uninstalled before installing Virtual Accelerator packages.

Cavium QLogic FastLinQ 4xxxx PMD NICs

PMD for this NIC requires up-to-date Storm firmware version (8.30.12.0).

It may be already provided along with your distribution, in /lib/firmware/qed/qed_init_values-8.30.12.0.bin. If not, it is available for download from the QLogic Driver Download Center.

Further details on this are available in DPDK documentation.

For more information, please refer to individual modules’ documentation.