UCS VMQ

[goapps.us]

When we enable VMQ in the service profile on a Hyper-V host. Do we also need to configure the VMQ to CPU assignment VIA powershell as described in the following?  http://blogs.technet.com/b/networking/archive/2013/09/24/vmq-deep-dive-2-of-3.aspx

Does USC handle it? 

Thanks 

[Justin Welch]

Hello,

The quick answer is no. The long answer is VMQ takes the MAC address of the host’s vNIC and each VM’s vmNIC and assigns it to a queue on the NIC. The NIC also has a default queue which latches all the traffic that does not match a MAC filter on the NIC. (Basically, if a vnic doesn't have vmq enabled, it falls under the default queue).

What we are really achieving here is a queue per vnic versus one queue for all vnics. Assigning cores to a VMQ just dictates which cores will be responsible for which queue.

Hope this helps,

Justin

[goapps.us]

Thank you Justin for the clarification, however the commands that are referenced in the blog are used to "pin" certain NIC's and its VMQ workloads to certain processors.

Does Cisco UCS handle this dynamically? If yes, where can I read more about this? 

Thanks 

[Justin Welch]

Hello,

Just for clarification VMQ is a Microsoft technology, Cisco supports it on their hardware. Without pinning the processors the traffic would be handled by the next core available in the CPU scheduler.

Thanks,

Justin

[goapps.us]

After a lot of research, here is what I found! 

With 2012r2 and Dynamic VMQ, the os should handle most workloads. Only after careful analysis should you need to tweak the VMQ / Core assignments. 

Thanks