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To overcome the disadvantages of the above two models, a new model was developed considering the advantages of the previous two models; SR-IOV and EDP, which is the DPU acceleration model. Each model has its own benefits and use-cases.
Figure 4. DPU Acceleration model
In the DPU Acceleration model, when a packet enters the DPU, it first encounters the DPU hardware accelerator. If the VM is identified, the hardware accelerator ensures that packet is sent to the VM. Like an EDP model, if it cannot be found, the packet is then delivered to the Slow Path through the software Fast Path located in the CPU. The path is processed, and the identified information is updated to the hardware accelerator through the Fast Path.
The DPU Acceleration Model has two modes of operation: MUX Mode and Unified Pass-through v2 (UPTv2) Mode. The first of these modes is the MUX Mode, which is the default mode. This mode requires host server CPU cycles for processing, has no Guest memory reservation, nor does it have a dependency of VMXNET3 drivers and has fewer requirements compared to UPTv2 mode. The UPTv2 mode completely offloads all processing to the DPU device. It is a complete pass-thru mechanism; near zero host CPU consumption, requires Guest Memory Reservation and has a dependency on specific VMXNET3 driver.
The MUX Mode provides higher flexibility, higher workload density, whereas the UPTv2 mode provides low latency data path, higher performance and UPTv2 VMs scale varies with VFs resources. Both modes provide accelerated networking services for VLAN (Virtual LANs) and overlay networking, as well as offloading TCP Segment Offload (TSO), Checksum and Receive Side Scaling (RSS). UPTv2 requires that the DPU device vendor publish virtualized device functions (VFs), like SR-IOV. Thus, the number of VMs that can be connected depends on the number of VFs published by device vendor. UPTv2 gives near SR-IOV performance with almost zero overhead on the hypervisor. This model leverages many salient virtualization features, such as HA, DRS, vMotion, and network security features.
vSphere on DPUs, enabled by vSphere Distributed Services Engine, is a new way to architect the core infrastructure by