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

[Tan, Jianfeng]

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.

Not sure if anyone from Amazon or Oracle can comment?

Thanks,
Jianfeng