Re: [PATCH] SCSI driver for VMware's virtual HBA.

Dmitry Torokhov
2009-09-01T16:33:48Z

On Tuesday 01 September 2009 09:16:51 am Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 01, 2009 at 09:12:43AM -0700, Roland Dreier wrote:
> > I'm not really sure we should be trying to force drivers to share just
> > because they are paravirtualized -- if there is real commonality, then
> > sure put it in common code, but different hypervisors are probably as
> > different as different hardware.
>
> I really disagree. This kind of virtualised drivers are pretty much
> communication protocols, and not hardware. As such, why design a new one?
> If there's an infelicity in the ibmvscsi protocol, it makes sense to
> design a new one. But being different for the sake of being different
> is just a way to generate a huge amount of make-work.
>

The same thing can be said about pretty much anything. We don't have
single SCSI, network, etc driver handling every devices in their
respective class, I don't see why it would be different here.
A hypervisor presents the same interface to the guest OS (whether
it is Linux, Solaris or another OS) much like a piece of silicone
does and it may very well be different form other hypervisors.

--
Dmitry