Member post by Chelsio Communications
Introduction
As Kubernetes continues transforming the cloud-native infrastructure, high-performance networking has become essential for maintaining seamless operations in containerized applications. Chelsio T6 Unified Wire Adapters provide advanced networking capabilities that meet the demands of modern Kubernetes deployments, especially for handling data-intensive workloads. With features like SR-IOV, hardware offloading, and acceleration for versatile protocols such as iWARP, NVMe/TCP, and NVMe-oF, T6 adapters allow Kubernetes clusters to scale efficiently while ensuring optimal performance.
In this blog post, we explore the integration of Chelsio T6 adapters into Kubernetes environments using CNI plugins, highlighting how their flexibility improves networking across a wide range of applications.
Key Benefits of T6 Adapters for Kubernetes
1. Performance Gains through SR-IOV
Chelsio T6 adapters support Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), allowing multiple Virtual Functions (VFs) to be exposed to Kubernetes pods and enabling direct I/O access to the network hardware. This delivers low-latency, high-throughput networking, which is essential for Kubernetes clusters handling critical workloads. By offloading network tasks to hardware, T6 adapters reduce the load on the host CPU, allowing more resources to be available for containerized applications, which enhances their performance, particularly when managing large volumes of data.
With SR-IOV, T6 adapters enable Kubernetes deployments to scale efficiently without compromising performance, making them the ideal choice for demanding high-performance workloads such as AI, analytics, and machine learning.
2. CNI Plugin Integration
Chelsio T6 adapters are fully compatible with Kubernetes’ Container Networking Interface (CNI) plugins, which manage pod networking across clusters. In the T6 testing environment, Flannel and Multus are used as CNI plugins. This demonstrates the seamless integration of T6 adapters into Kubernetes for managing Layer 3 IPv4 networking and multiple networks per pod.
The SR-IOV CNI plugin and the SR-IOV Network Device Plugin are used to attach Chelsio Virtual Functions (VFs) directly to pods. This integration allows Kubernetes administrators to effectively manage high-performance networking while maintaining flexibility in their network configurations. With these plugins, T6 adapters can deliver near-line-rate performance across multiple Kubernetes nodes, ensuring efficient communication between the pods.
3. Protocol Flexibility
Chelsio T6 adapters support hardware offloading for multiple networking protocols, such as iWARP, NVMe/TCP, and NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics). This flexibility makes the T6 adapters ideal for Kubernetes clusters with diverse networking requirements.
NVMe/TCP and NVMe-oF provide high-performance data transfer capabilities for storage-intensive applications, making T6 adapters ideal for environments that demand quick and reliable access to storage resources. T6 adapters also support TLS/SSL and IPsec offloading, improving the security of data transfers while lowering CPU usage during encryption and decryption. These offloading features make T6 adapters beneficial in environments where secure and high-speed data transfers are essential.
4. Use Case: High-Performance Workloads
For workloads that require significant data throughput, such as AI and machine learning applications, Chelsio T6 adapters provide the necessary performance. During testing, T6 adapters achieved 98 Gbps line-rate throughput while utilizing only 35% of CPU resources. This leaves ample CPU headroom for additional container deployments, making T6 adapters ideal for real-time and data-driven Kubernetes environments.
In addition to improving network performance, the offloading capabilities of T6 adapters significantly reduce CPU utilization, enabling Kubernetes clusters to scale without requiring expensive CPU upgrades. This makes the T6 adapters an ideal solution for data centers handling high-throughput applications or seeking to consolidate networking, storage, and computing onto a unified platform.
Technical Walkthrough
In the test environment described in the technical report, CRI-O served as the container runtime, while Flannel provided Layer 3 IPv4 networking between nodes. Multus was used to configure multiple networks per pod, enabling more advanced network configurations. Chelsio T6 VFs were allocated to pods using the SR-IOV CNI plugin, achieving near-line-rate performance across a 3-node Kubernetes cluster.
This setup illustrates how easily Kubernetes administrators can deploy T6 adapters in real-world environments, utilizing SR-IOV to enhance performance and efficiency.
Conclusion
Chelsio T6 adapters provide cutting-edge networking solutions for Kubernetes, utilizing SR-IOV and CNI plugins, such as Flannel and Multus, to achieve high-throughput and low-latency connectivity. An integration of protocol offloading and acceleration, including NVMe/TCP, NVMe-oF, iWARP, TLS/SSL, and IPsec, makes T6 adapters an excellent choice for Kubernetes environments running high-performance and data-intensive applications.
Chelsio T6 adapters, with their seamless scalability and support for multiple networking protocols, empower Kubernetes clusters to effortlessly manage modern workloads.
Call to Action
To learn more, explore the full technical report on T6 Kubernetes performance here or visit the Chelsio Communications website to discover how T6 adapters can enhance your Kubernetes deployments.