Network interface controller (NIC) multi-queue enables an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance to use multiple NIC queues to improve network performance. Performance bottlenecks may occur when a single vCPU is used to process NIC interrupts on an instance. To solve this issue, you can use NIC multi-queue to distribute NIC interrupts across different vCPUs. This way, network performance is improved.
Prerequisites
The following requirements are met:
- The instance type of your instance supports the NIC multi-queue feature. For more information about the instance types that support NIC multi-queue, see Overview of instance families. If the number of NIC queues is greater than one, NIC multi-queue is supported. Note In an instance of the re6p persistent memory-optimized instance family, if NIC interrupts are not distributed across different vCPUs, we recommend that you upgrade the
ecs_mq
configuration script to the latest version. - The image of your instance supports the NIC multi-queue feature and has this feature disabled by default. The following public images provided by Alibaba Cloud support the NIC multi-queue feature. The support for this feature is irrelevant to the bit sizes of the operating systems contained in images. Note
- Even if your operating system is included in the list, public images of earlier versions may not support the NIC multi-queue feature. We recommend that you use the latest public images. If the image of your instance has the NIC multi-queue feature enabled by default, skip this topic.
- The following procedure applies only to Linux instances. You do not need to configure the NIC multi-queue feature for ECS instances that run Windows 2012 or later because this feature is automatically configured.
Public image NIC multi-queue supported NIC multi-queue enabled CentOS 6.8/6.9/7.2/7.3/7.4/8.* Yes Yes Ubuntu 14.04/16.04/18.04/20.04 Yes Yes Debian 8.9/9.2/10.* Yes Yes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1/12 SP2/15 SP1/15 SP2 Yes Yes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9/7.4/7.5 Yes No OpenSUSE 42.3/15.* Yes No Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.1903 Yes Yes Windows 2012 or later Yes Yes
Background information
NIC multi-queue is a technology that can fix Quality of Service (QoS) issues of I/O bandwidth. The NIC multi-queue driver uses interrupts to bind each queue to different vCPUs to solve processing bottlenecks of single vCPUs when network I/O bandwidth increases and improve the packet forwarding rate and bandwidth performance. Under identical packet forwarding rate and network bandwidth conditions, two queues have performance 50% to 100% higher than that of a single queue. Performance can be improved even greater with the use of four queues.
Automatic configuration
- Connect to an ECS instance. For more information about connection methods, see Connection methods .
- Download the
ecs_mq
automatic configuration script package.wget https://ecs-image-tools.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/ecs_mq/ecs_mq_latest.tgz
- Decompress the script package.
tar -xzf ecs_mq_latest.tgz
- Change the working path.
cd ecs_mq/
- Run the extracted script. The command format varies based on image versions. For example, use
bash install.sh centos 7
for CentOS 7.6 images.bash install.sh <Operating system name> <Major version number of the operating system>
- Start the service.
systemctl start ecs_mq
Manual configuration
In the following example, a CentOS 7.6 image is used. The primary elastic network interface (ENI) is named eth0, and the secondary ENI is named eth1. This section describes how to manually configure NIC multi-queue.
- Run the
ethtool -l eth0
command to check whether the primary ENI supports NIC multi-queue.[testuser@localhost ~]# ethtool -l eth0 Channel parameters for eth0: Pre-set maximums: RX: 0 TX: 0 Other: 0 Combined: 2 # Indicates that a maximum of two queues can be configured. Current hardware settings: RX: 0 TX: 0 Other: 0 Combined: 1 # Indicates that one queue is in effect.
Note If the return values of the two Combined fields are the same, NIC multi-queue is enabled for the primary ENI. - Run the
ethtool -L eth0 combined 2
command to enable NIC multi-queue.This command configures the eth0 primary ENI to use two queues.[testuser@localhost ~]# ethtool -L eth0 combined 2
- Configure NIC multi-queue for the secondary ENI.
# Check whether the eth1 secondary ENI supports NIC multi-queue. [testuser@localhost ~]# ethtool -l eth1 Channel parameters for eth1: Pre-set maximums: RX: 0 TX: 0 Other: 0 Combined: 4 # Indicates that a maximum of four queues can be configured. Current hardware settings: RX: 0 TX: 0 Other: 0 Combined: 1 # Indicates that one queue is in effect. # Configure the eth1 secondary ENI to use four queues. [testuser@localhost ~]# ethtool -L eth1 combined 4