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

[Bill Bonaparte]

On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 12:13 AM, Tan, Jianfeng <jianfeng.tan at intel.com>
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
>