[dpdk-users] Proposal -- Add APIs allowing for VF management

[Scott Daniels <daniels@research.att.com>]

The need to configure and manage virtual functions (VFs) on a NIC in order 
to apply policy has grown to the point that we have implemented a small, 
DPDK based, tool to do so.  Our tool, VFd (Virtual Function daemon), 
allows us to configure VFs using a per VF description provided by an 
external source (e.g. a virtualisation manager such as Openstack).


In order to implement VFd, initially supporting just the Intel 82599, we 
found that not all of the NIC management could be accomplished through the
existing DPDK libraries, and would like to propose the following API 
extensions to DPDK:

    - mailbox communication callback support
    - TC configuration
    - DCB configuration
    - Queue configuration
    - PF/VF statistics

These API extensions would allow software such as VFd to manage any 
supported NIC without the need for customised code in the application.

Is this something that the community would be open to?


We also believe that once the APIs are added a more generic management 
tool, similar to VFd, could be added to allow for VF management via 
traditional command line tools (ifconfig, ip, ethtool). This could be 
maintained either as one of the DPDK examples, or as a separate community 
supported software application.

Again, we're wondering what the community thinks about such a tool.


Scott

VFd is open source and is hosted on github:
https://github.com/att/vfd


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E. Scott Daniels
PMTS - Cloud Software Research
AT&T Labs - Research