Re: [libvirt] [PATCH 0/5] Interface pools and passthrough mode

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 08:29:35PM -0500, Laine Stump wrote: > On 11/29/2011 02:53 PM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: >> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 03:46:13PM +0000, Shradha Shah wrote: >>> Interface Pools and Passthrough mode: >>> >>> Current Method: >>> The passthrough mode uses a macvtap a direct connection to connect each guest to the network. The physical interface to be used is picked from among those listed in<interface> sub elements of the<forward> element. >>> >>> The current specification for<forward> extends to allow 0 or more<interface> sub-elements: >>> Example: >>> <forward mode='passthrough' dev='eth10'/> >>> <interface dev='eth10'/> >>> <interface dev='eth12'/> >>> <interface dev='eth18'/> >>> <interface dev='eth20'/> >>> </forward> >>> >>> However with an ethernet card with 64 VF's or more, the above method gets tedious on the system. > >> Ignoring the ABI issue, I'm concerned that as we get PFs with an increasingly >> large number of VFs, we may well *not* want to associate all VFs with a single >> virtual network definition. eg, we might wna to put 32 VFs in one network and >> 32 VFs in another network. Or if we have 2 PFs, we might want to interleave >> VFs from several PFs across virtual networks. If all we can do is list the >> PF in the XML, we loose significant flexibility in how VFs are assigned. > > My first concern too when I saw the patch was the semantic change > (but also the loss of flexibility), which is obviously a no-go. It's > a convenient capability to have though, so it would be nice to get > it in somehow. What if we allowed including all the VFs associated > with a PF by adding an extra attribute? e.g.: > > <interface dev='eth10' type='sriov'/> This feels a little bit wrong to me. > (or whatever is more appropriate in place of "sriov"). Or possibly a > different element type could be used: > > <pf dev='eth10'/> I like this idea, because it is providing additional useful info, rather than changing existing elements, so it is maximally compatible. > (didn't want to spend time thinking of a better name than "pf"...). > > At the time the network is created, this would cause libvirt to get > the list of all VFs for the given PF and put them into the pool. > This could be used instead of, or in combination with, the existing > <interface dev='eth1'/> form. Thus the existing semantics would be > preserved, the flexibility of specifying individual devices would be > retained, and the desired convenience of adding all VFs of a PF with > a single line would be added. IIUC, what you're suggesting is the following behaviour: * Explicit interface list. App inputs: <forward mode='passthrough'> <interface dev='eth10'/> <interface dev='eth11'/> <interface dev='eth12'/> <interface dev='eth13'/> </forward> libvirt does not change XML * Automatically interface list from PF. App inputs: <forward mode='passthrough'> <pf dev='eth0'/> </forward> libvirt expands XML to be <forward mode='passthrough'> <pf dev='eth0'/> <interface dev='eth10'/> <interface dev='eth11'/> <interface dev='eth12'/> <interface dev='eth13'/> </forward> This is good because all previous info is still intact Regards, Daniel