Greater Manageability and Throughput: Cisco Nexus* 1000V Series Switches and Intel's Virtual Machine Device Queues

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Greater Manageability and Throughput

Cisco

Nexus

™

1000V Series Switches and Intel’s Virtual Machine Device Queues

Server virtualization has numerous beneﬁts in terms of reduced

equipment and power costs, space savings, and management.

However, it also introduces new challenges, including greater

overhead due to increased I/O throughput and limitations in

server access network elements such as services and policies.

Cisco and Intel provide innovative solutions in order to address

these challenges:

The Cisco

Nexus

™

1000V Series Switch is a pure software

implementation of a Cisco Nexus switch. It resides on a

server and integrates with the VMware ESX* hypervisor to

deliver virtual machine-aware network services in a virtual-

ized environment.

Intel’s Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) technology

addresses the increasing amount of trafﬁc on virtualized

servers by ofﬂoading data sorting from the hypervisor’s

virtual switch (vSwitch) to reduce I/O overhead and deliver

near-native I/O throughput.

Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches

Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches are virtual machine

access switches for VMware vSphere* environments running

the Cisco

NX-OS Software operating system. Operating

inside the VMware ESX hypervisor, the Cisco Nexus 1000V

Series Switch provides:

Policy-based virtual machine connectivity

Mobile virtual machine security and network policy

Non-disruptive operational model for your server

virtualization and networking teams

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switch has two major

components: the virtual Ethernet module (VEM) and the

external virtual supervisor module (VSM).

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series VEM runs as part of the VMware

ESX or ESXi kernel and replaces the VMware vSwitch.* The VEM

applies network policies to trafﬁc bound for VMs on the server.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series VSM hosts deﬁned policies

and controls multiple VEMs as one logical modular switch.

Developed in close collaboration with VMware, the Cisco

Nexus 1000V Series is certiﬁed by VMware to be compatible

with VMware vSphere, vCenter,* ESX, and ESXi, and with many

other vSphere features.

Virtual Machine Device Queues

Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) is a breakthrough

network silicon-level technology from Intel that ofﬂoads the

network I/O management burden from the vSwitch, improving

I/O throughput in virtualized servers. Introduced in 2007, VMDq

has been deployed by many customers to improve networking

performance in VMware ESX environments.

VMDq reduces I/O overhead on the hypervisor by performing

data sorting in the Intel

Ethernet controller, rather than the

vSwitch. As data packets arrive at the network adapter, a

Layer 2 classiﬁer/sorter in the Ethernet controller sorts and

Figure 1. Cisco

Nexus

™

1000V Series Switch architecture

Figure 2. VMDq ofﬂoads data sorting to the Intel

Ethernet controller

Visual Supervisor

Module (VSM)

 Virtual appliance

running Cisco NX-OS

(supports high-availability)

 Performs management,

monitoring, and configuration

 Tightly integrates with

VMware vCenter Server

Virtual Ethernet

Module (VEM)

 Enables advanced networking

capability on the hypervisor

 Provides each VM with

dedicated “switch port”

 Collection of VEMs − one

vNetwork distributed switch

Cisco Nexus

1000V VSM

VMware

vCenter Server

Cisco Nexus

1000V VEM

VMware vSphere

VM VM VM VM

Cisco Nexus

1000V VEM

VMware vSphere

VM VM VM VM

Cisco Nexus

1000V VEM

VMware vSphere

VM VM VM VM

Layer 2 Software Switch

MAC/PHY

vNIC vNIC vNIC

Rx 2

Tx 2

Rx 1

Tx 1

Rx 1

Tx 1

Rx n

Tx n

Rx n

Tx 3

Tx 2

Tx 3

Idle

NIC with VMDq

LAN

Layer 2 Classifier/Sorter

determines which VM each packet is destined for based on

MAC addresses and VLAN tags. It then places the packet in a

receive queue assigned to that VM. The vSwitch then routes

the packets to the respective VM instead of performing the

heavy lifting work of sorting data.

VMDq, available in 1GbE and 10GbE Intel Ethernet controllers

and adapters, is a key component of Intel

Virtualization Tech-

nology for Connectivity (Intel

VT for Connectivity), a suite of

hardware assists designed to improve networking performance

and improve system performance. Intel VT for Connectivity

is an important element of Intel

Virtualization Technology,

a set of platform hardware enhancements that help hypervi-

sor providers develop simpler and more robust virtualization

software, plus accelerate system and application solutions in

virtual environments.

Summary of content (2 pages)

PAGE 1
Greater Manageability and Throughput Cisco® Nexus™ 1000V Series Switches and Intel’s Virtual Machine Device Queues Server virtualization has numerous benefits in terms of reduced equipment and power costs, space savings, and management. However, it also introduces new challenges, including greater overhead due to increased I/O throughput and limitations in server access network elements such as services and policies.
PAGE 2
VM VM VM VM VMware NetQueue provides the sorted information to the Cisco Nexus 1000V series VEM VMware NetQueue Queue 1 Queue 2 Queue 3 Packet Classifier Unit Queue 1 VMDq sorts incoming data into queues based on destination VM 10 Throughput (Gbps) Cisco Nexus 1000V series VEM applies policies to sorted data Cisco Nexus 1000V VEM 9.4 9.4 VMware ESX vSwitch with VMDq VMware ESX and Cisco Nexus 1000V with VMDq 8 6 4 2 LAN Figure 3.