[dpdk-dev] vhost [query] : support for multiple ports and non VMDQ devices in vhost switch

[Tan, Jianfeng]

Hi,

Please review below proposal of Pankaj and myself after an offline 
discussion. (Pankaj, please correct me if I'm going somewhere wrong).

a. Remove HW dependent option, --strip-vlan, because different kinds of 
NICs behave differently. It's a bug fix.
b. Abstract switching logic into a framework, so that we can develop 
different kinds of switching logics. In this phase, we will have two 
switching logics: (1) a simple software-based mac learning switching; 
(2) VMDQ based switching. Any other advanced switching logics can be 
proposed based on this framework.
c. Merge tep_termination example vxlan as a switching logic of the 
framework.

To be decided:
d. Support multiple physical ports.
e. Keep the current way to use vhost lib directly or use vhost pmd instead.

On 8/16/2016 10:56 AM, Yuanhan Liu wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 04:42:33PM +0530, Pankaj Chauhan wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am working on an NXP platform where we intend to use user space vhost
>> switch (examples/vhost) as backend for VIRTIO devices. But there are two
>> limitations in current vhost-switch (examples/vhost)that are restricting my
>> use case:
>>
>> 1. The vhost-switch application is tightly integrated with Intel VMDQ. Since
>> my device doesn't have VMDQ i can not use this application directly.
> Sorry being late (I was on biz trip last week).
>
> Yes, a vhost example should not do that. We have an internal TODO to
> remove it. Actually, to make it optional, and Jianfeng was working on
> that. Well, seems that you two have already had some discussions.
>
>> 2. The vhost-switch application supports only one external or physical port
>> (non virtio devices), but my requirement is to have multiple physical ports
>> and multiple virtio devices.
> What are you going to achieve? BTW, have you tried testpmd (with vhost-pmd)?

Example testpmd will not allow those complex switching logics.

Thanks,
Jianfeng

> I'm with impression that it might be a better option to you.
>
> 	--yliu
>
>> In summary my requirement is to do whatever vhost-switch is doing, in
>> addition to that add support for following:
>>
>> 1. support devices that don't have VMDQ.
>> 2. Support multiple physical ports.
>>
>> I need suggestions on the approach i should take: whether to add support of
>> above mentioned in existing vhost-switch (examples/vhost) or write another
>> application (based on librte_vhost only) to support my requirements.
>>
>> I'll work on it after the suggestion i get from the list, and send the RFC
>> patch.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Pankaj
>>