DOCA Flow Inspector Service

NVIDIA DOCA Flow Inspector Service Guide

This document provides instructions on how to use the DOCA flow inspector service container on top of NVIDIA® BlueField® DPU.

The DOCA flow inspector service allows monitoring real-time data and extraction of telemetry components which can be utilized by various services for security, big data, and other purposes.

The flow inspector service is linked to the DOCA telemetry service (DTS). The flow inspector receives mirrored packets from the user. It then parses and forwards the data to the DTS which gathers predefined statistics forwarded by various providers/sources. The flow inspector uses the DOCA telemetry API to initiate a communication channel to the DTS while the DPDK infrastructure allows acquiring packets at a user-space layer.

The DOCA flow inspector runs inside of its own Kubernetes pod on BlueField and is intended to receive mirrored packets for analysis. The packets received are parsed and sent, in a predefined struct, to a telemetry collector which manages the rest of the telemetry aspects.

The DOCA flow inspector receives a configuration file in a JSON format which indicates which of the mirrored packets should be filtered out based on the L4 network header. The flow inspector runs on top of DPDK to acquire L4. The packets are then filtered based on the ports configured in the JSON input file. The non-filtered packets are parsed to a predefined struct and forwarded to the telemetry collector using IPC.

1. A JSON file is used as input to configure the allowed ports.
2. Connection to the telemetry collector is initialized and a configuration struct is defined for both small and large packets.
3. Traffic is mirrored to the relevant subfunction.
4. Ingress traffic is received through the configured subfunction.
5. Non-L4 traffic is dropped in using hardware rules, while the allowed ports are filtered using a software layer in the Arm cores.
6. Packets are parsed to the desired struct.
7. The telemetry information is forwarded to the telemetry agent using IPC.
8. Mirrored packets are freed.

The information collected by the DOCA flow inspector has two different structures that are differentiated by the payload's size (can be viewed when using the DTS to write the date locally). The predefined struct is organized as follows:

1. Timestamp
2. Host IP
3. Data Length
4. Data (Payload)
5. Source MAC
6. Destination MAC
7. L4 Protocol
8. Source IP
9. Destination IP
10. Source Port
11. Destination Port
12. TCP Flags

DOCA flow inspector service must be used with DTS of the same DOCA version. Before deploying the flow inspector container, ensure that the following prerequisites are satisfied:

1. Create the needed files and directories. Folders should be created automatically. Make sure the .json file resides inside the folder:
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   $ touch /opt/mellanox/doca/services/flow_inspector/bin/flow_inspector_cfg.json
           

   
   Validate that DTS's configuration folders exist. They should be created automatically when deploying DTS using the .yaml file.
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   $ sudo mkdir -p /opt/mellanox/doca/services/telemetry/config
   $ sudo mkdir -p /opt/mellanox/doca/services/telemetry/ipc_sockets
   $ sudo mkdir -p /opt/mellanox/doca/services/telemetry/data
           

   
   
2. Allocate hugepages. Allocated huge pages for a DPDK-based application. This requires root privileges.
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   $ echo 2048 > /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
           

   
   Or alternatively:
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   $ echo '2048' | sudo tee -a /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
   $ sudo mkdir /mnt/huge
   $ sudo mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /mnt/huge
           

   
   

   Deploy a scalable function according to Scalable Function Setup Guide and mirror packets accordingly using the Open vSwitch command.

   For example:

   1. Mirror packets from p0 to sf0:
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      $ ovs-vsctl add-br ovsbr1
      $ ovs-vsctl add-port ovsbr1 p0
      $ ovs-vsctl add-port ovsbr1 en3f0pf0sf0
      $ ovs-vsctl -- --id=@p1 get port en3f0pf0sf0 \
                  -- --id=@p2 get port p0 \
                  -- --id=@m create mirror name=m0 select-dst-port=@p2 select-src-port=@p2 output-port=@p1 \
                  -- set bridge ovsbr1 mirrors=@m
              

   2. Mirror packets from pf0hpf to sf0:
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      $ ovs-vsctl add-br ovsbr1
      $ ovs-vsctl add-port ovsbr1 pf0hpf
      $ ovs-vsctl add-port ovsbr1 en3f0pf0sf0
      $ ovs-vsctl -- --id=@p1 get port en3f0pf0sf0 \
                  -- --id=@p2 get port pf0hpf \
                  -- --id=@m create mirror name=m0 select-dst-port=@p2 select-src-port=@p2 output-port=@p1 \
                  -- set bridge ovsbr1 mirrors=@m
              

      The output of last command should be in the following format:
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      exp: 0d248ca8-66af-427c-b600-af1e286056e1
              

      
      
      Note:

      The designated SF must be created as a trusted function. Additional details can be found it the Scalable Function Setup Guide.

For information about the deployment of DOCA containers on top of the BlueField DPU, refer to NVIDIA DOCA Container Deployment Guide.

DTS is available on NGC, NVIDIA's container catalog. Service-specific configuration steps and deployment instructions can be found under the service's container page.

4.1. JSON Input

The flow inspector configuration file should be placed under /opt/mellanox/services/flow_inspector/.json and be built in the following format.

            

            
{
    "protocols": ["tcp", "udp"], #What L4 protocols are allowed
    "ports": #What L4 port ranges are allowed [src,dst]
    [
		["*","433"], #In this case, “*” stands for all source ports and dst port 433
		["20480","28341"], 
		["28341","20480"],
		["1720","1023"], # src port 1720, dst port 1023
    ]
}
        

4.2. Yaml File

The .yaml file downloaded from NGC can be easily edited according to one's needs.

            

            
env:
  # Set according to the local setup
  - name: SF_NUM_1
    value: "2"
  # Additional EAL flags, if needed
  - name: EAL_FLAGS
    value: ""
  # Service-Specific command line arguments
  - name: SERVICE_ARGS
    value: "--policy /flow_inspector/flow_inspector_cfg.json -l 4"
        

• The SF_NUM_1 value can be changed according to the SF used in the OVS configuration and can be found using the command in Scalable Function Setup Guide.
• The EAL_FLAGS value must be changed according to the DPDK flags required when running the container.
• The SERVICE_ARGS are the runtime arguments received by the service:
  • -l, --log-level <value> – sets the log level from 0 to 4
  • -p, --policy <json_path> – sets the JSON path inside the container

4.3. Verifying Output

Enabling write to data in the DTS allows debugging the validity of the DOCA Flow Inspector. The data written locally should be shown in the following format, which has been parsed by the Flow Inspector:

            

            
doca_telemetry_long_event {
	doca_telemetry_timestamp_t timestamp;
	char host_ip[MAX_IP_LEN];
	int64_t data_len;
	char data[MAX_DATA_LEN_LONG];
	char src_mac[MAX_MAC_LEN];
	char dest_mac[MAX_MAC_LEN];
	char protocol[PROTOCOL_LEN];
	char src_ip[MAX_IP_LEN];
	char dest_ip[MAX_IP_LEN];
	int src_port;
	int dest_port;
	int flags;
};
        

Uncomment the following line in dts_config.ini:

            

            
#output=/data
        

The schema folder contains JSON-formatted metadata files which allow reading the binary files containing the actual data. The binary files are written according to the naming convention shown in the following example (apt install tree):

            

            
$ tree /opt/mellanox/doca/services/telemetry/data/
/opt/mellanox/doca/services/telemetry/data/
├── {year}
│   └── {mmdd}
│        └── {hash}
│             ├── {source_id}
│             │   └── {source_tag}{timestamp}.bin
│             └── {another_source_id}
│                  └── {another_source_tag}{timestamp}.bin
└── schema
    └── schema_{MD5_digest}.json
        

New binary files appear when the service starts or when binary file's max age/size restriction is reached. If no schema or no data folders are present, refer to the Troubleshooting section in NVIDIA DOCA Telemetry Service Guide.

Reading the binary data can be done from within the DTS container using the following command:

            

            
crictl exec -it <Container ID> /opt/mellanox/collectx/bin/clx_read -s /data/schema /data/path/to/datafile.bin
        

Refer to the Troubleshootings section in NVIDIA DOCA Container Deployment Guide and NVIDIA DOCA Telemetry Service Guide. Additional notes:

• Make sure hugepages are allocated (step 2 under Requirements)
• Validate the .json file and port config

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