Netris SoftGate agent installation

Minimal hardware requirements

  • 2 x Intel Silver CPU

  • 96 GB RAM

  • 300 GB HDD

  • Nvidia Mellanox Connect-X 5 SmartNIC card

BIOS configuration

The following are some recommendations on BIOS settings. Different vendors will have different BIOS naming so the following is mainly for reference:

  • Before starting consider resetting all BIOS settings to their defaults.

  • Disable all power saving options such as: Power performance tuning, CPU P-State, CPU C3 Report and CPU C6 Report.

  • Select Performance as the CPU Power and Performance policy.

  • Disable Turbo Boost to ensure the performance scaling increases with the number of cores.

  • Set memory frequency to the highest available number, NOT auto.

  • Disable all virtualization options when you test the physical function of the NIC, and turn off VT-d.

  • Disable Hyper-Threading.

Software installation

Requires freshly installed Ubuntu Linux 18.04 and network connectivity with your Netris Controller over the out-of-band management network.

  1. Set environment variables to use Netris Controller as a proxy.

export http_proxy=http://<Your Netris Controller address>:3128 && export https_proxy=http://<Your Netris Controller address>:3128

echo -e 'Acquire::http::Proxy "http://<Your Netris Controller address>:3128";\nAcquire::https::Proxy "http://<Your Netris Controller address>:3128";' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/netris-proxy

  1. Config the apt for Mellanox repository.

wget -qO - https://www.mellanox.com/downloads/ofed/RPM-GPG-KEY-Mellanox | sudo apt-key add -

wget http://linux.mellanox.com/public/repo/mlnx_ofed/5.0-2.1.8.0/ubuntu18.04/mellanox_mlnx_ofed.list -O /tmp/mellanox_mlnx_ofed.list && sudo mv /tmp/mellanox_mlnx_ofed.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

  1. Config the apt for Netris repository.

wget -qO - http://repo.netris.ai/repo/public.key | sudo apt-key add -

echo "deb http://repo.netris.ai/repo/ bionic main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/netris.list

  1. Install Mellanox drivers

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install mlnx-ofed-dpdk

  1. Install Netris agent package and dependencies, including specific Linux Kernel version.

sudo apt-get install netris-dpdk-mlnx

  1. Configure Management IP address

Configure out of band management IP address. In case Netris Controller is not in the same OOB network then add a route to Netris Controller. No default route or other IP addresses should be configured.

sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
       address <Management IP address/prefix length>
       up ip ro add <Controller address> via <Management network gateway> #delete this line if Netris Controller is located in the same network with the SoftGate node.

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

sudo ifreload -a

  1. Initialize the SoftGate

netris-setup parameters, described below.
–auth - Authentication key, “6878C6DD88224981967F67EE2A73F092” is the default value, we strongly recommend to change this string in your controller as described in Controller initial configuration section.
–controller - IP address or domain name of Netris Controller.
–hostname - Specify the hostname for the current switch, this hostname should match the name defined for particular switch in the Controller..
–lo - IP address for the loopback interface, as it is defined in the controller.
–node-prio - brief explanation of node priority goes here

Run netris-setup.
sudo /opt/netris/bin/netris-setup --lo=<SoftGate loopback IP address as defined in controller>  --controller=<Netris Controller IP or FQDN> --hostname=<node name as defined in controller> --auth=<authentication key> --node-prio=<node priority 1/2>

Example: Running netris-setup

netris@ubuntu:~$ sudo /opt/netris/bin/netris-setup --lo=10.254.97.33  --controller=10.254.97.10 --hostname=softgate1 --auth=6a284d55148f81728f932b28e9d020736c8f78e1950b3d576f6e679d90516df1 --node-prio=1
* Setup Hostname
* Setup Hosts
* Setup Keepalived
* Setup Collectd
* Setup Loopback
* Get CPU List
* Setup FRR BGP Daemon
* Setup Netris Agent Config
* Setup DPDK Router Config
* Setup DPDK Router Systemd Unit
└── └── * Setup Grub Config
* Update Grub
└──
*** ATTENTION: You must reboot SoftGate to complete the installation
netris@ubuntu:~$

  1. Reboot the server

sudo reboot

When server boots up, you should see it’s heartbeat status in Net→Inventory