From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail-pink.research.att.com (mail-pink.research.att.com [204.178.8.22]) by dpdk.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBD3D4A65 for ; Fri, 15 Jul 2016 20:06:45 +0200 (CEST) Received: from mail-green.research.att.com (H-135-207-255-15.research.att.com [135.207.255.15]) by mail-pink.research.att.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E41F5120646 for ; Fri, 15 Jul 2016 14:17:44 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mt-230-34.research.att.com (mt-230-34.research.att.com [135.207.230.34]) by mail-green.research.att.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 49582E1F56 for ; Fri, 15 Jul 2016 14:04:58 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2016 14:06:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Scott Daniels To: users@dpdk.org Message-ID: User-Agent: Alpine 2.20.12 (LSU 116 2015-12-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII Subject: [dpdk-users] Proposal -- Add APIs allowing for VF management X-BeenThere: users@dpdk.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list List-Id: usage discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2016 18:06:45 -0000 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ E. Scott Daniels PMTS - Cloud Software Research AT&T Labs - Research