.. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause Copyright(c) 2010-2016 Intel Corporation. Vhost Library ============= The vhost library implements a user space virtio net server allowing the user to manipulate the virtio ring directly. In another words, it allows the user to fetch/put packets from/to the VM virtio net device. To achieve this, a vhost library should be able to: * Access the guest memory: For QEMU, this is done by using the ``-object memory-backend-file,share=on,...`` option. Which means QEMU will create a file to serve as the guest RAM. The ``share=on`` option allows another process to map that file, which means it can access the guest RAM. * Know all the necessary information about the vring: Information such as where the available ring is stored. Vhost defines some messages (passed through a Unix domain socket file) to tell the backend all the information it needs to know how to manipulate the vring. Vhost API Overview ------------------ The following is an overview of some key Vhost API functions: * ``rte_vhost_driver_register(path, flags)`` This function registers a vhost driver into the system. ``path`` specifies the Unix domain socket file path. Currently supported flags are: - ``RTE_VHOST_USER_CLIENT`` DPDK vhost-user will act as the client when this flag is given. See below for an explanation. - ``RTE_VHOST_USER_NO_RECONNECT`` When DPDK vhost-user acts as the client it will keep trying to reconnect to the server (QEMU) until it succeeds. This is useful in two cases: * When QEMU is not started yet. * When QEMU restarts (for example due to a guest OS reboot). This reconnect option is enabled by default. However, it can be turned off by setting this flag. - ``RTE_VHOST_USER_DEQUEUE_ZERO_COPY`` Dequeue zero copy will be enabled when this flag is set. It is disabled by default. There are some truths (including limitations) you might want to know while setting this flag: * zero copy is not good for small packets (typically for packet size below 512). * zero copy is really good for VM2VM case. For iperf between two VMs, the boost could be above 70% (when TSO is enableld). * For zero copy in VM2NIC case, guest Tx used vring may be starved if the PMD driver consume the mbuf but not release them timely. For example, i40e driver has an optimization to maximum NIC pipeline which postpones returning transmitted mbuf until only tx_free_threshold free descs left. The virtio TX used ring will be starved if the formula (num_i40e_tx_desc - num_virtio_tx_desc > tx_free_threshold) is true, since i40e will not return back mbuf. A performance tip for tuning zero copy in VM2NIC case is to adjust the frequency of mbuf free (i.e. adjust tx_free_threshold of i40e driver) to balance consumer and producer. * Guest memory should be backended with huge pages to achieve better performance. Using 1G page size is the best. When dequeue zero copy is enabled, the guest phys address and host phys address mapping has to be established. Using non-huge pages means far more page segments. To make it simple, DPDK vhost does a linear search of those segments, thus the fewer the segments, the quicker we will get the mapping. NOTE: we may speed it by using tree searching in future. * zero copy can not work when using vfio-pci with iommu mode currently, this is because we don't setup iommu dma mapping for guest memory. If you have to use vfio-pci driver, please insert vfio-pci kernel module in noiommu mode. - ``RTE_VHOST_USER_IOMMU_SUPPORT`` IOMMU support will be enabled when this flag is set. It is disabled by default. Enabling this flag makes possible to use guest vIOMMU to protect vhost from accessing memory the virtio device isn't allowed to, when the feature is negotiated and an IOMMU device is declared. However, this feature enables vhost-user's reply-ack protocol feature, which implementation is buggy in Qemu v2.7.0-v2.9.0 when doing multiqueue. Enabling this flag with these Qemu version results in Qemu being blocked when multiple queue pairs are declared. - ``RTE_VHOST_USER_POSTCOPY_SUPPORT`` Postcopy live-migration support will be enabled when this flag is set. It is disabled by default. Enabling this flag should only be done when the calling application does not pre-fault the guest shared memory, otherwise migration would fail. * ``rte_vhost_driver_set_features(path, features)`` This function sets the feature bits the vhost-user driver supports. The vhost-user driver could be vhost-user net, yet it could be something else, say, vhost-user SCSI. * ``rte_vhost_driver_callback_register(path, vhost_device_ops)`` This function registers a set of callbacks, to let DPDK applications take the appropriate action when some events happen. The following events are currently supported: * ``new_device(int vid)`` This callback is invoked when a virtio device becomes ready. ``vid`` is the vhost device ID. * ``destroy_device(int vid)`` This callback is invoked when a virtio device is paused or shut down. * ``vring_state_changed(int vid, uint16_t queue_id, int enable)`` This callback is invoked when a specific queue's state is changed, for example to enabled or disabled. * ``features_changed(int vid, uint64_t features)`` This callback is invoked when the features is changed. For example, ``VHOST_F_LOG_ALL`` will be set/cleared at the start/end of live migration, respectively. * ``new_connection(int vid)`` This callback is invoked on new vhost-user socket connection. If DPDK acts as the server the device should not be deleted before ``destroy_connection`` callback is received. * ``destroy_connection(int vid)`` This callback is invoked when vhost-user socket connection is closed. It indicates that device with id ``vid`` is no longer in use and can be safely deleted. * ``rte_vhost_driver_disable/enable_features(path, features))`` This function disables/enables some features. For example, it can be used to disable mergeable buffers and TSO features, which both are enabled by default. * ``rte_vhost_driver_start(path)`` This function triggers the vhost-user negotiation. It should be invoked at the end of initializing a vhost-user driver. * ``rte_vhost_enqueue_burst(vid, queue_id, pkts, count)`` Transmits (enqueues) ``count`` packets from host to guest. * ``rte_vhost_dequeue_burst(vid, queue_id, mbuf_pool, pkts, count)`` Receives (dequeues) ``count`` packets from guest, and stored them at ``pkts``. * ``rte_vhost_crypto_create(vid, cryptodev_id, sess_mempool, socket_id)`` As an extension of new_device(), this function adds virtio-crypto workload acceleration capability to the device. All crypto workload is processed by DPDK cryptodev with the device ID of ``cryptodev_id``. * ``rte_vhost_crypto_free(vid)`` Frees the memory and vhost-user message handlers created in rte_vhost_crypto_create(). * ``rte_vhost_crypto_fetch_requests(vid, queue_id, ops, nb_ops)`` Receives (dequeues) ``nb_ops`` virtio-crypto requests from guest, parses them to DPDK Crypto Operations, and fills the ``ops`` with parsing results. * ``rte_vhost_crypto_finalize_requests(queue_id, ops, nb_ops)`` After the ``ops`` are dequeued from Cryptodev, finalizes the jobs and notifies the guest(s). * ``rte_vhost_crypto_set_zero_copy(vid, option)`` Enable or disable zero copy feature of the vhost crypto backend. Vhost-user Implementations -------------------------- Vhost-user uses Unix domain sockets for passing messages. This means the DPDK vhost-user implementation has two options: * DPDK vhost-user acts as the server. DPDK will create a Unix domain socket server file and listen for connections from the frontend. Note, this is the default mode, and the only mode before DPDK v16.07. * DPDK vhost-user acts as the client. Unlike the server mode, this mode doesn't create the socket file; it just tries to connect to the server (which responses to create the file instead). When the DPDK vhost-user application restarts, DPDK vhost-user will try to connect to the server again. This is how the "reconnect" feature works. .. Note:: * The "reconnect" feature requires **QEMU v2.7** (or above). * The vhost supported features must be exactly the same before and after the restart. For example, if TSO is disabled and then enabled, nothing will work and issues undefined might happen. No matter which mode is used, once a connection is established, DPDK vhost-user will start receiving and processing vhost messages from QEMU. For messages with a file descriptor, the file descriptor can be used directly in the vhost process as it is already installed by the Unix domain socket. The supported vhost messages are: * ``VHOST_SET_MEM_TABLE`` * ``VHOST_SET_VRING_KICK`` * ``VHOST_SET_VRING_CALL`` * ``VHOST_SET_LOG_FD`` * ``VHOST_SET_VRING_ERR`` For ``VHOST_SET_MEM_TABLE`` message, QEMU will send information for each memory region and its file descriptor in the ancillary data of the message. The file descriptor is used to map that region. ``VHOST_SET_VRING_KICK`` is used as the signal to put the vhost device into the data plane, and ``VHOST_GET_VRING_BASE`` is used as the signal to remove the vhost device from the data plane. When the socket connection is closed, vhost will destroy the device. Guest memory requirement ------------------------ * Memory pre-allocation For non-zerocopy, guest memory pre-allocation is not a must. This can help save of memory. If users really want the guest memory to be pre-allocated (e.g., for performance reason), we can add option ``-mem-prealloc`` when starting QEMU. Or, we can lock all memory at vhost side which will force memory to be allocated when mmap at vhost side; option --mlockall in ovs-dpdk is an example in hand. For zerocopy, we force the VM memory to be pre-allocated at vhost lib when mapping the guest memory; and also we need to lock the memory to prevent pages being swapped out to disk. * Memory sharing Make sure ``share=on`` QEMU option is given. vhost-user will not work with a QEMU version without shared memory mapping. Vhost supported vSwitch reference --------------------------------- For more vhost details and how to support vhost in vSwitch, please refer to the vhost example in the DPDK Sample Applications Guide. Vhost data path acceleration (vDPA) ----------------------------------- vDPA supports selective datapath in vhost-user lib by enabling virtio ring compatible devices to serve virtio driver directly for datapath acceleration. ``rte_vhost_driver_attach_vdpa_device`` is used to configure the vhost device with accelerated backend. Also vhost device capabilities are made configurable to adopt various devices. Such capabilities include supported features, protocol features, queue number. Finally, a set of device ops is defined for device specific operations: * ``get_queue_num`` Called to get supported queue number of the device. * ``get_features`` Called to get supported features of the device. * ``get_protocol_features`` Called to get supported protocol features of the device. * ``dev_conf`` Called to configure the actual device when the virtio device becomes ready. * ``dev_close`` Called to close the actual device when the virtio device is stopped. * ``set_vring_state`` Called to change the state of the vring in the actual device when vring state changes. * ``set_features`` Called to set the negotiated features to device. * ``migration_done`` Called to allow the device to response to RARP sending. * ``get_vfio_group_fd`` Called to get the VFIO group fd of the device. * ``get_vfio_device_fd`` Called to get the VFIO device fd of the device. * ``get_notify_area`` Called to get the notify area info of the queue.