Intel ET Quad Port NIC - PCI Passthrough / VT-d

Intel ET Quad Port NIC - PCI Passthrough / VT-d

[Robert Dunkley]

Hi Everyone,


Sorry to bother the Dev list for this but no one seemed to know on the
User list. When using this card in PCI passthrough can you pass
individual ports to different VMs? Or do you have to pass 2 or the
entire 4 ports at a time when using PCI passthrough?



Thanks,

Rob

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Re: Intel ET Quad Port NIC - PCI Passthrough / VT-d

[Simon Horman]

On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 08:37:03AM -0000, Robert Dunkley wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> 
> Sorry to bother the Dev list for this but no one seemed to know on the
> User list. When using this card in PCI passthrough can you pass
> individual ports to different VMs? Or do you have to pass 2 or the
> entire 4 ports at a time when using PCI passthrough?

Hi Robert,

you should certainly be able to pass through only one of the ports,
and I expect you should be able to pass through different ports to
different VMs.

RE: Intel ET Quad Port NIC - PCI Passthrough / VT-d

[Robert Dunkley]

Hi Simon,


Thanks for the informative response.

A kind of related question....

Does anyone know the minimum required kernel and Xen versions for PCI
pass through to work on the new AMD chipsets?


Thanks,

Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Horman [mailto:horms@verge.net.au] 
Sent: 02 November 2009 09:22
To: Robert Dunkley
Cc: xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Intel ET Quad Port NIC - PCI Passthrough / VT-d

On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 08:37:03AM -0000, Robert Dunkley wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> 
> Sorry to bother the Dev list for this but no one seemed to know on the
> User list. When using this card in PCI passthrough can you pass
> individual ports to different VMs? Or do you have to pass 2 or the
> entire 4 ports at a time when using PCI passthrough?

Hi Robert,

you should certainly be able to pass through only one of the ports,
and I expect you should be able to pass through different ports to
different VMs.


The SAQ Group

Registered Office: 18 Chapel Street, Petersfield, Hampshire GU32 3DZ
SAQ is the trading name of SEMTEC Limited. Registered in England & Wales
Company Number: 06481952

http://www.saqnet.co.uk AS29219

SAQ Group Delivers high quality, honestly priced communication and I.T. services to UK Business.

Broadband : Domains : Email : Hosting : CoLo : Servers : Racks : Transit : Backups : Managed Networks : Remote Support.

ISPA Member

Re: Intel ET Quad Port NIC - PCI Passthrough / VT-d

[Simon Horman]

On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 09:41:45AM -0000, Robert Dunkley wrote:
> Hi Simon,
> 
> 
> Thanks for the informative response.
> 
> A kind of related question....
> 
> Does anyone know the minimum required kernel and Xen versions for PCI
> pass through to work on the new AMD chipsets?

Hi Rob,

I would try Xen 3.4.1 + the 2.6.18 (ancient, I know) kernel.
Failing that you are probably in xen-unstable territory as there
have been a lot of changes to pass-through since the last
stable release.

Re: Intel ET Quad Port NIC - PCI Passthrough / VT-d

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk]

On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 08:21:38PM +1100, Simon Horman wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 08:37:03AM -0000, Robert Dunkley wrote:
> > Hi Everyone,
> > 
> > 
> > Sorry to bother the Dev list for this but no one seemed to know on the
> > User list. When using this card in PCI passthrough can you pass
> > individual ports to different VMs? Or do you have to pass 2 or the
> > entire 4 ports at a time when using PCI passthrough?
> 
> Hi Robert,
> 
> you should certainly be able to pass through only one of the ports,
> and I expect you should be able to pass through different ports to
> different VMs.

It depends also if you machine does MSI/MSIx. If you do, then yes - each port
to each guest. If you can't do MSI/MSIx then you need to pass the PCI devices
that share the same IRQ to the guest. Which in most cases means you need to share
two ports per guest.
> 
> 
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