Re: [RFC PATCH v3 0/3] Enable virtio_net to act as a backup for a passthru device

[Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 2:42 AM, Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us> wrote:
> Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 07:11:19PM CET, sridhar.samudrala@intel.com wrote:
>>Patch 1 introduces a new feature bit VIRTIO_NET_F_BACKUP that can be
>>used by hypervisor to indicate that virtio_net interface should act as
>>a backup for another device with the same MAC address.
>>
>>Ppatch 2 is in response to the community request for a 3 netdev
>>solution.  However, it creates some issues we'll get into in a moment.
>>It extends virtio_net to use alternate datapath when available and
>>registered. When BACKUP feature is enabled, virtio_net driver creates
>>an additional 'bypass' netdev that acts as a master device and controls
>>2 slave devices.  The original virtio_net netdev is registered as
>>'backup' netdev and a passthru/vf device with the same MAC gets
>>registered as 'active' netdev. Both 'bypass' and 'backup' netdevs are
>>associated with the same 'pci' device.  The user accesses the network
>>interface via 'bypass' netdev. The 'bypass' netdev chooses 'active' netdev
>>as default for transmits when it is available with link up and running.
>
> Sorry, but this is ridiculous. You are apparently re-implemeting part
> of bonding driver as a part of NIC driver. Bond and team drivers
> are mature solutions, well tested, broadly used, with lots of issues
> resolved in the past. What you try to introduce is a weird shortcut
> that already has couple of issues as you mentioned and will certanly
> have many more. Also, I'm pretty sure that in future, someone comes up
> with ideas like multiple VFs, LACP and similar bonding things.

The problem with the bond and team drivers is they are too large and
have too many interfaces available for configuration so as a result
they can really screw this interface up.

Essentially this is meant to be a bond that is more-or-less managed by
the host, not the guest. We want the host to be able to configure it
and have it automatically kick in on the guest. For now we want to
avoid adding too much complexity as this is meant to be just the first
step. Trying to go in and implement the whole solution right from the
start based on existing drivers is going to be a massive time sink and
will likely never get completed due to the fact that there is always
going to be some other thing that will interfere.

My personal hope is that we can look at doing a virtio-bond sort of
device that will handle all this as well as providing a communication
channel, but that is much further down the road. For now we only have
a single bit so the goal for now is trying to keep this as simple as
possible.

> What is the reason for this abomination? According to:
> https://marc.info/?l=linux-virtualization&m=151189725224231&w=2
> The reason is quite weak.
> User in the vm sees 2 (or more) netdevices, he puts them in bond/team
> and that's it. This works now! If the vm lacks some userspace features,
> let's fix it there! For example the MAC changes is something that could
> be easily handled in teamd userspace deamon.

I think you might have missed the point of this. This is meant to be a
simple interface so the guest should not be able to change the MAC
address, and it shouldn't require any userspace daemon to setup or
tear down. Ideally with this solution the virtio bypass will come up
and be assigned the name of the original virtio, and the "backup"
interface will come up and be assigned the name of the original virtio
with an additional "nbackup" tacked on via the phys_port_name, and
then whenever a VF is added it will automatically be enslaved by the
bypass interface, and it will be removed when the VF is hotplugged
out.

In my mind the difference between this and bond or team is where the
configuration interface lies. In the case of bond it is in the kernel.
If my understanding is correct team is mostly in user space. With this
the configuration interface is really down in the hypervisor and
requests are communicated up to the guest. I would prefer not to make
virtio_net dependent on the bonding or team drivers, or worse yet a
userspace daemon in the guest. For now I would argue we should keep
this as simple as possible just to support basic live migration. There
has already been discussions of refactoring this after it is in so
that we can start to combine the functionality here with what is there
in bonding/team, but the differences in configuration interface and
the size of the code bases will make it challenging to outright merge
this into something like that.