Re: [Xen-devel] [dpdk-dev] Can xenvirt pmd work in xen guest (aka DomU) without xen-vhost in Dom0 ?

[Bill Bonaparte <programme110@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 12:13 AM, Tan, Jianfeng <jianfeng.tan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,

On 10/8/2017 12:54 PM, Bill Bonaparte wrote:

Thanks Jianfeng for taking time to reply. 

please allow me to briefly explain why I want to run dpdk on xen.

our system is based on dpdk, which means we use dpdk as packet receive/transmit engine, 

and with integrated dpdk virtio/vmxnet3 driver, our system can run on KVM/VMware platform .

this year, we have plan to run our system on AWS cloud, but I found that AWS

uses xen as its virtualization platform, and the bus-info of nic is vif-x (x could be 0,1,2...), 

the driver used in kernel is vif. this should be para-virtualized nic used on xen.

My guess is exactly as you describe. In AWS, we lack of a PMD for xen netfront (vif) nic. And even we got such a PMD, we still need a PMD for xen netback. Both are missing.

I don't know which dpdk drvier can manage this pv nic. then I see xenvirt, I think this driver can 

did this job, like virtio can manage virtio nic which is used on kvm.

unfortunately, after some study work, I run testpmd successfully on xen, but no packets received.

with the informain got from you, I know It's need to run vhost_xen at dom0 so that xenvirt at domU can work.

but for my case, I have no change to run vhost_xen at dom0, because I only can operate my own domU.

for this case, If I want to run system which is based on dpdk at domU, what should I do? 

appreciate any idea or suggestion from you.

What kind of performance are you seeking? Only accelerating the frontend by a new PMD, i.e. netfront, we can bypass the VM kernel (). But without accelerating the backend, it only brings limited improvement.

for me, the most important thing at the moment, is to run our system on xen guest (aka DomU), with the full functions. the performance could be a secondary consideration.

most of time, for our guests,  full functions, with the acceptable  performance, is  fine. 

do we have plan to support xen netfront pmd in dpdk ? 

in my humble opinion,  limited performance is better than "not work" .

Not sure if anyone from Amazon or Oracle can comment?

Thanks,
Jianfeng

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