Would there be interest in virtualization of the ixgbe driver?

[Jack Vogel]

While it seems interesting in theory, from what Ryan has told me it would
require
massive change to the code base, which I do not think is worthwhile without
significant demand.

This ability could be provided with SRIOV host support, which I would rather
see.

I'm still willing to look at changes and decide then if Ryan wishes.

Jack


On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 7:46 AM, Nikos Vassiliadis <nvass9573 at gmx.com>wrote:

> On 1/5/2011 12:50 AM, Ryan Stone wrote:
>
>> The way that I envision this working is that you'd run something like
>> "ifconfig vix0 create parent ix1" to create a new virtual interface
>> sharing the same physical interface as ix1.  From that point on, vix0
>> would be a completely different interface from ix1, with its own MAC,
>> vlan table, IPs, etc.
>>
>> Any comments as to whether this would be useful(or useless) would be
>> welcome.
>>
>
> Speaking for myself, I would say, yes, it sounds very interesting.
>
> Currently the same result can be achieved, by assigning a pseudo-ethernet
> interface to a vnet and bridging it to a physical ethernet interface.
> It would be nice to offload some things to the hardware.
>
> Yet, I don't know if the number of changes in the infrastructure worth the
> labor, for just one specific hardware. Is ixgbe the only hardware that
> support such things?
> Or maybe it is some trend of the future?
>
> As a virtualization user, I find it most useful.
>
> Nikos
>