2.2. Methodology

2.2.1. Abstract

This chapter describes the methodology/overview of SampleVNF project from the perspective of NFVI Characterization

2.2.2. Overview

This project covers the dataplane benchmarking for Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI)) using the PROX tool, according to ETSI GS NFV-TST009.

The test execution and reporting is driven by the Xtesting framework and is fully automated.

When executing the tests, traffic will be send between 2 or more PROX VMs and all metrics will be collected in the Xtesting database. The placement of the test VMs (in which the PROX tool is running), can be controlled by Heat stacks, but can also be done through other means. This will be explained in the chapter covering the PROX instance deployment, and needs to be done prior to the test execution.

The PROX tool is a DPDK based application optimized for high throughput packet handling. As such, we will not measure limitations imposed by the tool, but the capacity of the NFVI. In the rare case that the PROX tool would impose a limit, a warning will be logged.

2.2.3. ETSI-NFV

The document ETSI GS NFV-TST009, “Specification of Networking Benchmarks and Measurement Methods for NFVI”, specifies vendor-agnostic definitions of performance metrics and the associated methods of measurement for Benchmarking networks supported in the NFVI. Throughput, latency, packet loss and delay variation will be measured. The delay variation is not represented by the Frame Delay Variation (FDV) as defined in the specification, but by the average latency, the 99 percentile latency, the maximum latency and the complete latency distribution histogram.

2.2.4. Metrics

The metrics, as reported by the tool, and aligned with the definitions in ETSI GS NFV-TST009, are shown in Table1.

Table 1 - Network Metrics

Measurement	Description
Throughput	Maximum number of traffic that can be sent between 2 VM instances, within the allowed packet loss requirements. Results are expressed in Mpps and in Gb/s
Latency	99 percentile Round trip latency expressed in micro-seconds Note that you can also specify the n-th percentile
Delay Variation	Average latency, maximum latency and the latency histogram
Loss	Packets per seconds that were lost on their round trip between VMs. Total packet loss numbers are also reported

Note

The description in this OPNFV document is intended as a reference for users to execute the benchmarking. For complete description of the methodology, please refer to the ETSI document.