Re: [kvm-devel] [PATCH 3/3] virtio PCI device

[Avi Kivity <avi@qumranet.com>]

Zachary Amsden wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 09:13 +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
>
>   
>> Where the device is implemented is an implementation detail that should 
>> be hidden from the guest, isn't that one of the strengths of 
>> virtualization?  Two examples: a file-based block device implemented in 
>> qemu gives you fancy file formats with encryption and compression, while 
>> the same device implemented in the kernel gives you a low-overhead path 
>> directly to a zillion-disk SAN volume.  Or a user-level network device 
>> capable of running with the slirp stack and no permissions vs. the 
>> kernel device running copyless most of the time and using a dma engine 
>> for the rest but requiring you to be good friends with the admin.
>>
>> The user should expect zero reconfigurations moving a VM from one model 
>> to the other.
>>     
>
> I think that is pretty insightful, and indeed, is probably the only
> reason we would ever consider using a virtio based driver.
>
> But is this really a virtualization problem, and is virtio the right
> place to solve it?  Doesn't I/O hotplug with multipathing or NIC teaming
> provide the same infrastructure in a way that is useful in more than
> just a virtualization context?
>   

With the aid of a dictionary I was able to understand about half the 
words in the last sentence.  Moving from device to device using 
hotplug+multipath is complex to configure, available on only some 
guests, uses rarely-exercised paths in the guest OS, and only works for 
a few types of devices (network and block).  Having host independence in 
the device means you can change the device implementation for, say, a 
display driver (consider, for example, a vmgl+virtio driver, which can 
be implemented in userspace or tunneled via virtio-over-tcp to some 
remote display without going through userspace, without the guest 
knowing about it).

-- 
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