SNAP-4 Service Release Notes
This page describes new features, known issues, and bug fixes for NVIDIA ® BlueField ® -3 SNAP software.
User Experience Updates:
Added a new firmware configuration parameter:
NVME_EMULATION_MAX_QUEUE_DEPTH
, must be set during Firmware configuration.
New Features:
Enhanced live update tool to support hit-less updates from SNAP source to SNAP container.
Improved SNAP IO latency for virtio-blk.
Added support for Ubuntu 24.04 with the BlueField BF-Bundle.
Implemented a new mechanism to track NVMe driver bind/unbind events on the host.
Added the RPC
nvme_controller_dbg_debug_stats_get
for querying the states of submission queues (SQ) and completion queues (CQ) for NVMe.Introduced beta-level VFIO live migration support for virtio-blk.
Bug Fixes:
Various bug fixes to enhance system stability.
Compatibility:
SNAP July container 4.8.0 is compatible with April GA firmware.
Enhanced live update tool to enable hit-less updates from SNAP 4.7.0 (April) to SNAP 4.8.0 (July).
Ref # | Issue |
4436211 | Description: I/O operations from the host side may hang when using the vblk emulation device with indirect mode. |
Keywords: indirect mode | |
Discovered in version: 4.5.3 | |
4503883 | Description: Fixed a problem where controller destruction would stall in the BDEV reset. |
Keywords: Tear-down stall | |
Discovered in version: 4.5.3 | |
4507936 | Description: Corrected the default MQES value for hotplug devices |
Keywords: MQES | |
Discovered in version: 4.5.3 | |
4508111 | Description: Addressed an issue where multiple disks would become invisible after performing a live update during a host reboot. |
Keywords: live update; host reboot | |
Discovered in version: 4.5.3 | |
4510772 | Description: Fixed a kernel panic on the host that could occur following SNAP NVMe recovery procedures. |
Keywords: live update; host reboot | |
Discovered in version: 4.5.3 |
SNAP Issues
Ref # | Issue |
4499506 | Description: Live update fails when multiple remote bdevs are configured, due to a QP creation timeout. |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: Live update; remote bdev | |
Discovered in version: 4.8.0 | |
4561599 | Description: NVMe UEFI expansion ROM driver requires at least 2 IO queues to be supported by SNAP controller. |
Workaround: Use | |
Keywords: NVMe; UEFI boot | |
Discovered in version: 4.8.0 | |
4499506 4502937 | Description: When working with high scale (>=16) of virtio-blk or NVMe functions, backed by SPDK's NVMe-oF /RDMA bdevs as a backend, live update process may fail. |
Workaround: Use "regular" update process (close + reopen SNAP application). | |
Keywords: NVMe; virtio-blk; live update; SPDK; NVMe-oF /RDMA | |
Reported in version: 4.8.0 | |
4513104 | Description: If the virtio-blk driver in the VM is unprobed or there is an FLR on the VM function during virtio-blk VFIO live migration, the driver may get stuck. |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: virtio-blk; live migration; FLR; reset; driver unprobe | |
Reported in version: 4.8.0 | |
- | Description: Linux kernel's |
Workaround: Use the | |
Keywords: virtio_blk; linux; kernel; size_max | |
Reported in version: 4.7.0 | |
4396707 | Description: SPDK's |
Workaround: When using the SPDK | |
Keywords: virtio_blk; size_max; SPDK | |
Reported in version: 4.7.0 | |
4409344 | Description: When performing live update too fast (using automated script), destination process might not yet create all necessary resources, when prompted to handshake with source process. |
Workaround: Add a | |
Keywords: virtio_blk; nvme; live update | |
Reported in version: 4.7.0 | |
4412341 | Description: When using high scale (512<=) of virtio-blk VFs on a single PF, sudden hypervisor crash (or brutal warm reboot) may result in hypervisor hang, due to the long FLR processing time. |
Workaround: Split the opened VFs among more PFs; gracefully shutdown VMs before performing hard OS reset | |
Keywords: virtio-blk; FLR; SR-IOV | |
Reported in version: 4.7.0 | |
4104709 | Description: Some legacy operating systems (e.g., RockyLinux with kernel 4.18) issues virtio-blk zero-length I/Os during boot (e.g., during EDD probing). |
Workaround: Set | |
Keywords: virtio-blk; zero-length I/Os | |
Reported in version: 4.6.0 | |
- | Description: When using both NVMe and Virtio-blk protocols in SNAP, their data providers may share the same DPA HARTS, potentially causing NVMe configuration or performance issues. This is especially relevant when Virtio-blk is in DPU mode and NVMe is in DPA mode. |
Workaround: Use | |
Keywords: Virtio-blk and NVMe; DPA core mask. | |
Reported in version: 4.6.0 | |
4110943 | Description: Hot-unplugging a hotplugged Virtio BLK device is not allowed unless a Virtio BLK controller has previously been created for the device. |
Workaround: Create a Virtio BLK controller on the device which need to do hotunplug | |
Keywords: hotplug; hotunplug | |
Discovered in version: 4.5.0 | |
3631346 | Description: When using dynamic MSIX with NVMe protocol, the |
Workaround: Ignore the value and assume the | |
Keywords: NVMe; MSIX | |
Discovered in version: 4.4.1 | |
- | Description: The SPDK |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: NVMe | |
Discovered in version: 4.4.0 | |
3817040 | Description: When running |
Workaround: Destroy and re-create the controller. | |
Keywords: NVMe | |
Discovered in version: 4.4.0 | |
3809646 | Description: When working with a new DPA provider, if an interrupt is sent to DPA immediately after a DMA operation, DPA may wake up before the DMA is fully written to the buffer, causing it to miss events. |
Workaround: Add a software-based periodic wake-up mechanism. | |
Keywords: NVMe | |
Discovered in version: 4.4.0 | |
3773346 | Description: When configuring the virtio-blk controller, using an unaligned |
Workaround: | |
Keywords: Virtio-blk; NVMe-oF; spdk | |
Discovered in version: 4.3.1 | |
3745842 | Description: When using the NVMe/TCP SPDK block device as a backend, SNAP is limited to working with no more than 8 cores. |
Workaround: Work with Arm core mask which uses only 8 cores. | |
Keywords: NVMe; TCP; SPDK | |
Discovered in version: 4.3.1 | |
- | Description: Container images may become corrupted, resulting in a container status of |
Workaround:
Remove the YAML from kubelet, use | |
Keywords: NGC; container image | |
Discovered in version: 4.3.1 | |
3757171 | Description: When running virtio-blk emulation with large IOs (>128K) and SPDK's NVMe-oF initiator as a backend, IOs might fail in the SPDK layer due to poor alignment. |
Workaround: | |
Keywords: SPDK; virtio-blk; size_max | |
Discovered in version: 4.3.1 | |
3689918 3753637 | Description: The SNAP container takes a long time to start up when configured with a large number of emulations, potentially exceeding the default NVMe driver timeout. |
Workaround: Increase the NVMe driver IO timeout from 30 to 300 seconds. | |
Keywords: NVMe; recovery; kernel driver | |
Discovered in version: 4.3.0 | |
- | Description: NVMeTCP XLIO is not supported when running 64K page size kernels on the DPU Arm cores (as is the case for CentOS 8.x, Rocky 8.x, or openEuler 20.x). |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: 64K page size; NVMeTCP XLIO | |
Discovered in version: 4.1.0 | |
3264154 | Description: NVMeTCP XLIO is not supported when running 64K page size kernels on the DPU Arm cores (such is the case with CentOS 8.x, Rocky 8.x, or openEuler 20.x). |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: Page size; NVMeTCP XLIO | |
Discovered in version: 4.1.0 | |
- | Description: NVMe over RDMA full offload is not supported. |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: NVMe over RDMA; support | |
Discovered in version: 4.0.0 |
OS or Vendor Issues
Ref # | Issue |
4408109 |
Description: When using a Windows OS on the host side, the controller must be created with a |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: Windows, Windows OS | |
Discovered in version: 4.8.0 | |
4540848 | Description: Windows NVMe driver ignores MQEs value set on the PCI BAR, and forcefully trying to open queues with the size of 256. |
Workaround: Set ` NVME_EMULATION_MAX_QUEUE_DEPTH` in mlxconfig to be >= 8 (default is 12), to support MQES >= 256 queue depth. | |
Keywords: NVMe, Windows | |
Discovered in version: 4.8.0 | |
- | Description: Windows OS assumes NVMe devices support at least 2 IO CQs (CQ ID 2 exists), even when the controller declares it only supports 1 IO queue. |
Workaround: Open NVMe controller with | |
Keywords: Windows, NVMe | |
Discovered in version: 4.7.0 | |
4418372 | Description: On Windows OS, hot-unplugging a virtio-blk PCIe function can cause unexpected behavior, and a host reboot might be necessary to recover. This is because the Windows OS does not support online PCIe rescan, unlike Linux. |
Workaround: Before unplugging a PCIe function, disable its storage controller in | |
Keywords: Windows, virtio-blk, hotplug | |
Discovered in version: 4.7.0 | |
4206444 |
Description: The Linux kernel driver does not restrict |
Workaround: Ensure that all virtio-blk controllers are configured with a | |
Keywords: Virtio-blk; kernel driver; | |
Reported in version: 4.6.0 | |
- | Description: When using hotplugged PCIe devices, after all devices are plugged, the host must be rebooted for Windows to detect all devices (some Windows versions may perform reboot automatically). This is requires as Windows OS does not support online PCIe rescan (as in Linux). |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: Hotplug, Windows | |
Reported in version: 4.5.0 | |
3748674 | Description: On most modern Linux distributions, unplugging a PCIe function from the host while there are inflight I/Os can cause the virtio-blk driver to hang. |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: Hotplug, Linux | |
Reported in version: 4.5.0 | |
- | Description: Some old Windows OS NVMe drivers have buggy usage of SGL support. |
Workaround: Disable SGL support when using Windows OS by setting the | |
Keywords: Windows; NVMe | |
Reported in version: 4.4.0 | |
2879262 | Description: When the virtio-blk kernel driver cannot find enough MSI-X vectors to satisfy all its opened virtqueues, it failovers to assign a single MSI-X vector to all virtqueues which negatively impacts performance. In addition, when a large number (e.g., 64) of virtqueues are associated with a single MSI-X, the kernel may enter a soft-lockup (kernel bug) and the IO will hang. |
Workaround: Always keep | |
Keywords: Virtio-blk; kernel driver; MSI-X | |
Reported in version: 4.3.0 | |
- | Description: If PCIe devices are inserted before the hot-plug driver is loaded on the host, the hot-plug driver in kernel versions less than 4.19 does not enable the slot, even if the slot is occupied (i.e., presence detected in the slot status register). This means that only the presence state of the slot is updated by the firmware, but the PCIe slot is not enabled by the kernel after the host boots up. As a result, the PCIe device will not be visible when using |
Workaround: Add | |
Keywords: Virtio-blk; kernel driver; hot-plug | |
Reported in version: 4.2.1 | |
- | Description: RedHat/Centos 7.x does not handle "online" (post driver probe) namespace additions or removals correctly. |
Workaround: Use | |
Keywords: NVMe; CentOS; RedHat; kernel | |
Reported in version: 4.1.0 | |
- | Description: Some Windows drivers have experimental support for "online" (post driver probe) namespace additions/removal, although such support is not communicated with the device. |
Workaround: Use | |
Keywords: NVMe; Windows | |
Reported in version: 4.1.0 | |
- | Description: VMWare ESXi supports "online" (post driver probe) namespace additions/removal, only if “Namespace Management” is supported by controller. |
Workaround: Use | |
Keywords: NVMe, ESXi | |
Reported in version: 4.1.0 | |
- | Description: Ubuntu 22.04 does not support 500 VFs. |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: Virtio-blk; kernel driver; Ubuntu 22.04 | |
Reported in version: 4.1.0 | |
- | Description: Virtio-blk Linux kernel driver does not handle PCIe FLR events. |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: Virtio-blk; kernel driver | |
Reported in version: 4.0.0 | |
Description: SPDK NVMe-oF/RDMA initiator fails to connect to kernel NVMe-oF/RDMA remote target. | |
Workaround: Use setting | |
Keywords: SPDK, NVMe-oF, RDMA, kernel | |
Reported in version: 4.3.1 | |
- | Description: Windows OS virtio-blk driver expects at least 64K data to be available for a single IO request |
Workaround: Use | |
Keywords: Windows, virtio-blk | |
Reported in version: 4.3.1 | |
- | Description: Some older Windows OS versions have malfunctioning inbox virtio-blk driver, expects a 3-party virtio-blk driver to be pre-installed to operate properly. |
Workaround: Use a verified 3rd-party driver from Fedora | |
Keywords: Windows, virtio-blk | |
Reported in version: 4.3.1 | |
3679373 | Description: Virtio-blk spdk driver (vfio-pci based) does not handle PCIe FLR events. |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: Virtio-blk; SPDK driver | |
Reported in version: 4.3.0 | |
- | Description: A n ew virtio-blk Linux kernel driver (starting kernel 4.18) does not support hot-unplug during traffic. Since the kernel may self-generate spontaneous IOs, on rare occasions, an issue may arise even when there is no traffic. |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: Virtio-blk; kernel driver | |
Reported in version: 4.0.0 | |
- |
Description: When using SRIOV with VFs sharing the same driver as their PF ( |
Workaround: N/A | |
Keywords: SRIOV; driver. | |
Discovered in version: 3.8.0-8 |