Re: RFC: Network Plugin Architecture (NPA) for vmxnet3

From: Stephen Hemminger
Date: Tue May 04 2010 - 20:05:40 EST


On Tue, 4 May 2010 16:02:25 -0700
Pankaj Thakkar <pthakkar@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Device passthrough technology allows a guest to bypass the hypervisor and drive
> the underlying physical device. VMware has been exploring various ways to
> deliver this technology to users in a manner which is easy to adopt. In this
> process we have prepared an architecture along with Intel - NPA (Network Plugin
> Architecture). NPA allows the guest to use the virtualized NIC vmxnet3 to
> passthrough to a number of physical NICs which support it. The document below
> provides an overview of NPA.
>
> We intend to upgrade the upstreamed vmxnet3 driver to implement NPA so that
> Linux users can exploit the benefits provided by passthrough devices in a
> seamless manner while retaining the benefits of virtualization. The document
> below tries to answer most of the questions which we anticipated. Please let us
> know your comments and queries.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Signed-off-by: Pankaj Thakkar <pthakkar@xxxxxxxxxx>


Code please. Also, it has to work for all architectures not just VMware and
Intel.
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