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Requirements for vMX on Contrail

Table 1 lists the hardware requirements.

Table 1: Hardware Requirements

Description

Value

Sample system configuration

Intel Ivy Bridge processors or later

Example of Ivy Bridge processor: Intel Xeon E5-2667 v2 @ 3.30 GHz 25 MB Cache

For single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) NIC type, use Intel Ivy Bridge CPU (or higher) and Intel x520 NICs using ixgbe driver or X710 NICs with 10G ports and using i40e driver. Any other NIC models are not supported. Support for unmodified ixgbe driver and i40e driver is available from Junos OS Release 18.4R1 onwards.

Note:

For Junos OS Releases prior to 18.4R1, a modified IXGBE driver must be installed to use SR-IOV.

Note:

Support for modified drivers for i40e is not available starting in Junos OS Release 19.1 and later releases.

Number of cores

Note:

Performance mode is the default mode, and the minimum value is based on one port.

For lite mode: Minimum of 4

  • 2 for VCP

  • 3 for VFP

For performance mode with low-bandwidth (virtio) or high-bandwidth (SR-IOV) applications: Minimum of 9

  • 1 for VCP

  • 8 for VFP

The exact number of required vCPUs differs depending on the Junos OS features that are configured and other factors, such as average packet size. You can contact Juniper Networks Technical Assistance Center (JTAC) for validation of your configuration and make sure to test the full configuration under load before use in production. For typical configurations, we recommend the following formula to calculate the minimum vCPUs required by the VFP:

  • Without QoS—(4 * number-of-ports) + 4

  • With QoS—(5 * number-of-ports) + 4

Note:

All VFP vCPUs must be in the same physical non-uniform memory access (NUMA) node for optimal performance.

In addition to vCPUs for the VFP, we recommend 2 x vCPUs for VCP and 2 x vCPUs for Host OS on any server running the vMX.

Memory

Note:

Performance mode is the default mode.

For lite mode: Minimum of 8 GB

  • 4 GB for VCP

  • 4 GB for VFP

For performance mode: Minimum of 16 GB

  • 4 GB for VCP

  • 12 GB for VFP

Additional 2 GB recommended for host OS

Storage

Minimum storage requirements:

  • 40 GB for VCP

  • 4 GB for VFP

vNICs

SR-IOV

Note:

SR-IOV is only supported with Intel Ivy Bridge CPU (or higher) and Intel x520 NICs using ixgbe driver or X710 NICs with 10G ports and using i40e driver. Any other NIC models are not supported.

Support for unmodified ixgbe driver and i40e driver is available from Junos OS Release 18.4R1 onwards.

VMXNET3

Table 2 lists the software requirements for Contrail on Ubuntu.

Table 2: Software Requirements for Ubuntu

Description

Value

Operating system

  • Contrail 3.0

    OpenStack Liberty

    Ubuntu 14.04.4

    Linux 3.13.0-85-generic

  • Starting with Junos OS Release 17.4R1

    Contrail 4.0

    OpenStack Newton

    Ubuntu 16.04

    Linux 4.4.0-62-generic

Related Documentation

Release History Table
Release
Description
18.4R1
Support for unmodified ixgbe driver and i40e driver is available from Junos OS Release 18.4R1 onwards.