Objectives

This paper explores and provides details about how to do the following:

• Exploit HiperSockets™ in a KVM environment as an alternative to using the typical network configuration utilizing the Open Standards Adapter (OSA) 10GbE network card. The highest performance OSA configuration using the MacVTap driver in “bridge” mode was used as a baseline to compare HiperSockets capabilities.
• Exploit IP routing, to remove the limitations imposed when a KVM guest interface is bound to dedicated KVM host network interface (like with OSA/MacVTap), permitting the KVM guest to communicate externally using any network interface available in the KVM host.
• Exploit IP routing to provide transparent and seamless communication across network interfaces configured to use different OSI network models (that is, between Layer 2 and Layer 3). KVM guests currently only operates using Layer 2. IP routing enables KVM guests to communicate and interact with any operating system supported on the IBM® Z platforms including those that only operate using, or that are configured for, Layer 3 (that is, z/OS®, z/VSE®, and z/VM®).

This paper documents how to set up and configure KVM virtual machines to use HiperSockets with IP routing capabilities of the TCP/IP stack.

This paper provides a Network Performance comparison between both network configurations and illustrates how HiperSockets can achieve greater performance for many workload types, across a wide range of data-flow patterns, compared with using an OSA 10GbE card.