[dpdk-dev] vhost compliant virtio based networking interface in container

[Xie, Huawei]

Added dev at dpdk.org

On 8/20/2015 6:04 PM, Xie, Huawei wrote:
> Yanping:
> I read your mail, seems what we did are quite similar. Here i wrote a
> quick mail to describe our design. Let me know if it is the same thing.
>
> Problem Statement:
> We don't have a high performance networking interface in container for
> NFV. Current veth pair based interface couldn't be easily accelerated.
>
> The key components involved:
>     1.    DPDK based virtio PMD driver in container.
>     2.    device simulation framework in container.
>     3.    dpdk(or kernel) vhost running in host.
>
> How virtio is created?
> A:  There is no "real" virtio-pci device in container environment.
> 1). Host maintains pools of memories, and shares memory to container.
> This could be accomplished through host share a huge page file to container.
> 2). Containers creates virtio rings based on the shared memory.
> 3). Container creates mbuf memory pools on the shared memory.
> 4) Container send the memory and vring information to vhost through
> vhost message. This could be done either through ioctl call or vhost
> user message.
>
> How vhost message is sent?
> A: There are two alternative ways to do this.
> 1) The customized virtio PMD is responsible for all the vring creation,
> and vhost message sending.
> 2) We could do this through a lightweight device simulation framework.
>     The device simulation creates simple PCI bus. On the PCI bus,
> virtio-net PCI devices are created. The device simulations provides
> IOAPI for MMIO/IO access.
>    2.1  virtio PMD configures the pseudo virtio device as how it does in
> KVM guest enviroment.
>    2.2  Rather than using io instruction, virtio PMD uses IOAPI for IO
> operation on the virtio-net PCI device.
>    2.3  The device simulation is responsible for device state machine
> simulation.
>    2.4   The device simulation is responsbile for talking to vhost.
>      With this approach, we could minimize the virtio PMD modifications.
> The virtio PMD is like configuring a real virtio-net PCI device.
>
> Memory mapping?
> A: QEMU could access the whole guest memory in KVM enviroment. We need
> to fill the gap.
> container maps the shared memory to container's virtual address space
> and host maps it to host's virtual address space. There is a fixed
> offset mapping.
> Container creates shared vring based on the memory. Container also
> creates mbuf memory pool based on the shared memroy.
> In VHOST_SET_MEMORY_TABLE message, we send the memory mapping
> information for the shared memory. As we require mbuf pool created on
> the shared memory, and buffers are allcoated from the mbuf pools, dpdk
> vhost could translate the GPA in vring desc to host virtual.
>
>
> GPA or CVA in vring desc?
> To ease the memory translation, rather than using GPA, here we use
> CVA(container virtual address). This the tricky thing here.
> 1) virtio PMD writes vring's VFN rather than PFN to PFN register through
> IOAPI.
> 2) device simulation framework will use VFN as PFN.
> 3) device simulation sends SET_VRING_ADDR with CVA.
> 4) virtio PMD fills vring desc with CVA of the mbuf data pointer rather
> than GPA.
> So when host sees the CVA, it could translates it to HVA(host virtual
> address).
>
> Worth to note:
> The virtio interface in container follows the vhost message format, and
> is compliant with dpdk vhost implmentation, i.e, no dpdk vhost
> modification is needed.
> vHost isn't aware whether the incoming virtio comes from KVM guest or
> container.
>
> The pretty much covers the high level design. There are quite some low
> level issues. For example, 32bit PFN is enough for KVM guest, since we
> use 64bit VFN(virtual page frame number),  trick is done here through a
> special IOAPI.
>
> /huawei
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