From owner-freebsd-virtualization@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 13 15:47:38 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E618D106564A for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:47:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nvass9573@gmx.com) Received: from mailout-eu.gmx.com (mailout-eu.gmx.com [213.165.64.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3BFED8FC0C for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:47:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail invoked by alias); 13 Jan 2011 15:47:36 -0000 Received: from adsl-80.91.140.41.tellas.gr (EHLO [192.168.73.193]) [91.140.41.80] by mail.gmx.com (mp-eu005) with SMTP; 13 Jan 2011 16:47:36 +0100 X-Authenticated: #46156728 X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX18EHCMfV2kExFd6w9LIwPiQlB9bWT+BY9q5y5yzRu 0WKbXXLf+sWRR9 Message-ID: <4D2F1E40.1030604@gmx.com> Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:46:08 +0200 From: Nikos Vassiliadis User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101207 Thunderbird/3.1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ryan Stone References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Y-GMX-Trusted: 0 Cc: Jack F Vogel , freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Would there be interest in virtualization of the ixgbe driver? X-BeenThere: freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Discussion of various virtualization techniques FreeBSD supports." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:47:39 -0000 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