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Requirements

Compatibility​

The addon is compatible with VyOS 1.5-rolling-202405280020 or newer.

System requirements​

Minimal system requirements to run an addon (VPP):

CPU: x86-64 with SSE4.2

CPU cores: 4

RAM: 8 GB (16 GB if you have more than 100k routes)

System preparation​

QEMU/KVM​

If you are using QEMU/KVM for tests, you can add the next arguments for qemu: -cpu host -machine q35,kernel-irqchip=split -device intel-iommu,intremap=on,caching-mode=on

This may reduce overhead and is also required for vmxnet3 drivers. However, this is not compatible with virtio, so mixing vmxnet3 and virtio in one VM is not possible.

VFIO​

VFIO is required to unlock some VPP features like modern drivers and improve performance. This is not necessary for all the systems but is preferred if supported by your hardware.

VFIO driver is faster than UIO, and DPDK will use it if your hardware supports it and VFIO support is configured.

VyOS is not configured for VFIO by default and there is no CLI option to enable it now. Therefore, modifications should be done manually.

  1. Update GRUB templates.

    sudo sed -i 's/{{ passwd_opts(v.bootmode) }}/{{ passwd_opts(v.bootmode) }} intel_iommu=on modules_load=vfio,vfio_iommu_type1,vfio_pci/g' /usr/share/vyos/templates/grub/grub_compat.j2
    sudo sed -i 's/vmlinuz" ${boot_opts}/vmlinuz" ${boot_opts} intel_iommu=on modules_load=vfio,vfio_iommu_type1,vfio_pci/g' /usr/share/vyos/templates/grub/grub_vyos_version.j2

  2. Reboot the router twice to apply changes.