44 lines
1.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
44 lines
1.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
====================
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Specialized hardware
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====================
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Certain workloads require specialized hardware devices that
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have significant virtualization or sharing challenges.
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Applications such as load balancers, highly parallel brute
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force computing, and direct to wire networking may need
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capabilities that basic OpenStack components do not provide.
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Challenges
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~~~~~~~~~~
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Some applications need access to hardware devices to either
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improve performance or provide capabilities that are not
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virtual CPU, RAM, network, or storage. These can be a shared
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resource, such as a cryptography processor, or a dedicated
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resource, such as a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). OpenStack can
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provide some of these, while others may need extra work.
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Solutions
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~~~~~~~~~
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To provide cryptography offloading to a set of instances,
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you can use Image service configuration options.
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For example, assign the cryptography chip to a device node in the guest.
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The OpenStack Command Line Reference contains further information on
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configuring this solution in the section `Image service property keys
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<http://docs.openstack.org/cli-reference/glance.html#image-service-property-keys>`_.
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A challenge, however, is this option allows all guests using the
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configured images to access the hypervisor cryptography device.
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If you require direct access to a specific device, PCI pass-through
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enables you to dedicate the device to a single instance per hypervisor.
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You must define a flavor that has the PCI device specifically in order
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to properly schedule instances.
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More information regarding PCI pass-through, including instructions for
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implementing and using it, is available at
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`https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Pci_passthrough <https://wiki.openstack.org/
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wiki/Pci_passthrough#How_to_check_PCI_status_with_PCI_api_patches>`_.
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.. figure:: figures/Specialized_Hardware2.png
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:width: 100%
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