Host machine requirements

vSIM VMs can be created and managed using the open-source Kernel-based VM (KVM) hypervisor.

Nokia recommends the use of the Libvirt software package to manage the deployment of VMs in a Linux KVM environment. Libvirt is open source software that provides a set of APIs for creating and managing VMs on a host machine, independent of the hypervisor. Libvirt uses XML files to define the properties of VMs and virtual networks. It also provides a convenient virsh command line tool.

The vSIM VM examples shown in this guide assume that VM parameters in a domain XML file are read and acted upon by the virsh program.

You can install integrated model vSIM (SR-1, SR-1s, IXR-R6, IXR-ec) VMs on hosts running the VMware ESXi hypervisor. Only ESXi versions 6.0, 6.5, and 6.7 are supported with the vSIM.

Nokia recommends deployment of the vSphere vCenter server and use of the vSphere Web Client GUI for managing the virtual machines in a VMware environment.

The following VMware features are supported with vSIM VMs:

• e1000 vNIC interfaces

• vNIC association with a vSphere standard switch

• vNIC association with a vSphere distributed switch

• vMotion

• High Availability

Non-supported features include VMXNET3 device adapter support, SR-IOV, PCI pass-through, DRS, fault tolerance, and Storage vMotion.

The Linux bridge is a software implementation of an IEEE 802.1D bridge that forwards Ethernet frames based on learned MACs. It is part of the bridge-utils package. The Linux bridge datapath is implemented in the kernel (specifically, the bridge kernel module), and it is controlled by the brctl userspace program.

On Centos and RHEL hosts, a Linux bridge can be created by adding the ifcfg-brN (where N is a number) file in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ directory. The contents of this file contain the following directives:

• DEVICE=brN (with N correctly substituted)

• TYPE=Bridge (Bridge is case-sensitive)

The following shows an example ifcfg file:

TYPE=Bridge 
DEVICE=br0 
IPADDR=192.0.2.1 
PREFIX=24 
GATEWAY=192.0.2.254 
DNS1=8.8.8.8 
BOOTPROTO=static 
ONBOOT=yes 
NM_CONTROLLED=no 
DELAY=0 

To add another interface as a bridge port of brN, add the BRIDGE=brN directive to the ifcfg network-script file for that other interface.

On Ubuntu hosts, a Linux bridge is created by adding an auto brN stanza followed by an iface brN stanza to the /etc/network/interfaces file. The iface brN stanza can include several attributes, including the bridge_ports attribute, which lists the other interfaces that are ports of the Linux bridge.

The following example shows an /etc/network/interfaces file that creates a bridge br0 with eth0 as a bridge port:

     auto lo 
          iface lo inet loopback 
     auto br0 
          iface br0 inet dhcp 
               bridge_ports eth0 
               bridge_stp off 
               bridge_fd 0 
               bridge_maxwait 0 

By default, the Linux bridge is VLAN unaware and it does not look at VLAN tags, nor does it modify them when forwarding the frames.

If the bridge is configured to have VLAN sub-interfaces, frames without a matching VID are dropped or filtered.

If a VLAN sub-interface of a port is added as a bridge port, then frames with the matching VID are presented to the bridge with the VLAN tag stripped. When the bridge forwards an untagged frame to this bridge port, a VLAN tag with a matching VID is automatically added.