Re: [libvirt] [RFC 0/7] Live Migration with Pass-through Devices proposal

On 04/23/2015 04:34 AM, Chen Fan wrote: As I think you've already discovered, passing through non-SRIOV NICS is problematic. It is completely impossible for the host to change their MAC address before assigning them to the guest - the guest's driver sees standard netdev hardware and resets it, which resets the MAC address to the original value burned into the firmware. This makes management more complicated, especially when you get into scenarios such as what we're discussing (i.e. migration) where the actual hardware (and thus MAC address) may be different from one run to the next. Since libvirt's <interface> element requires a fixed MAC address in the XML, it's not possible to have an <interface> that gets the actual device from a network pool (without some serious hacking to that code), and there is no support for plain (non-network) <hostdev> device pools; there would need to be a separate (nonexistent) driver for that. Since the <hostdev> element relies on the PCI address of the device (in the <source> subelement, which also must be fixed) to determine which device to passthrough, a domain config with a <hostdev> that could be run on two different machines would require the device to reside at exactly the same PCI address on both machines, which is a very serious limitation to have in an environment large enough that migrating domains is a requirement. Also, non-SRIOV NICs are limited to a single device per physical port, meaning probably at most 4 devices per physical host PCIe slot, and this results in a greatly reduced density on the host (and even more so on the switch that connects to the host!) compared to even the old Intel 82576 cards, which have 14 VFs (7VFs x 2 ethernet ports). Think about it - with an 82576, you can get 14 guests into 1 PCIe slot and 2 switch ports, while the same number of guests with non-SRIOV would take 4 PCIe slots and 14(!) switch ports. The difference is even more striking when comparing to chips like the 82599 (64 VFs per port x 2), or a Mellanox (also 64?) or SolarFlare (128?) card. And don't forget that, because you don't have pools of devices to be automatically chosen from, that each guest domain that will be migrated requires a reserved NIC on *every* machine it will be migrated to (no other domain can be configured to use that NIC, in order to avoid conflicts). Of course you could complicate the software by adding a driver that manages pools of generic hostdevs, and coordinates MAC address changes with the guest (part of what you're suggesting), but all that extra complexity not only takes a lot of time and effort to develop, it also creates more code that needs to be maintained and tested for regressions at each release. The alternative is to just spend $130 per host for an 82576 or Intel I350 card (these are the cheapest SRIOV options I'm aware of). When compared to the total cost of any hardware installation large enough to support migration and have performance requirements high enough that NIC passthrough is needed, this is a trivial amount. I guess the bottom line of all this is that (in my opinion, of course :-) supporting useful migration of domains that used passed-through non-SRIOV NICs would be an interesting experiment, but I don't see much utility to it, other than "scratching an intellectual itch", and I'm concerned that it would create more long term maintenance cost than it was worth.