Xen devel - Dec 2004 - can several guest OS be bound to their own ports on multiport Ethernet NIC?

[basic architecture question from a Xen newbiew; sorry if it''s too
basic]
 
I''m looking into running 10-15 guest OS (XenoLinux) on a single box
where
each guest OS will need separate physical Ethernet connection (with
it''s
own
MAC address etc). 
Assuming I''ll be using 2 or 4-port NICs (due to limited # of PCI
slots),
can each of the
4 guest OS be bound to it''s own port on such NIC?
Which 4-port NICs (if any) are suppported now? Are any more
planned/expected 
to be supported for Xen 3.0 (as this plan depends on using AMD64
anyway)?
 
Thanks.
                 Igor

Is there a specific reason why each guest requires it''s own ethernet
card?

Each VIF has it''s own unique mac addresses at each end of the VIF link
between dom0 and domX. It will show up in the pcakets via the bridging
in dom-0. You can verify this by listing the arp table (via the arp -an
command in *nix).

Brian



On Mon, 2004-12-06 at 11:08 -0500, Igor Mendelev wrote:
> [basic architecture question from a Xen newbiew; sorry if it''s too
> basic]
>  
> I''m looking into running 10-15 guest OS (XenoLinux) on a single
box
> where
> each guest OS will need separate physical Ethernet connection (with
> it''s own
> MAC address etc). 
> Assuming I''ll be using 2 or 4-port NICs (due to limited # of PCI
> slots), can each of the
> 4 guest OS be bound to it''s own port on such NIC?
> Which 4-port NICs (if any) are suppported now? Are any more
> planned/expected 
> to be supported for Xen 3.0 (as this plan depends on using AMD64
> anyway)?
>  
> Thanks.
>                  Igor 
-- 



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Apart from Brian''s reply

Any n-port driver supported by Linux *should* also work with Xen.

If you want to assign different ports to different VMs these ports need
to appear as separate PCI devices (have a unique ID). The you should be
able to hide these ports from dom 0 and assign them individually to a
VM.

Also you need to make sure that you will be able to assign different
ports on each card to different IRQs because otherwise performance
won''t
be very good. In fact, I don''t think shared interrupts between
different
VMs has been particularly stress tested...it probably works ok but there
might be corner cases...

Rolf
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xen-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:xen-devel-
> admin@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Igor Mendelev
> Sent: 06 December 2004 08:09
> To: xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [Xen-devel] can several guest OS be bound to their own ports
on
> multiport Ethernet NIC?
> 
> [basic architecture question from a Xen newbiew; sorry if it''s too
basic]
> 
> I''m looking into running 10-15 guest OS (XenoLinux) on a single
box
where
> each guest OS will need separate physical Ethernet connection (with
it''s
> own
> MAC address etc).
> Assuming I''ll be using 2 or 4-port NICs (due to limited # of PCI
slots),
> can each of the
> 4 guest OS be bound to it''s own port on such NIC?
> Which 4-port NICs (if any) are suppported now? Are any more
> planned/expected
> to be supported for Xen 3.0 (as this plan depends on using AMD64
anyway)?
> 
> Thanks.
>                  Igor

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Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users.
Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. 
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https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel

Igor Mendelev wrote:
> [basic architecture question from a Xen newbiew; sorry if it''s too
basic]
>  
> I''m looking into running 10-15 guest OS (XenoLinux) on a single
box where
> each guest OS will need separate physical Ethernet connection (with
it''s own
> MAC address etc).
> Assuming I''ll be using 2 or 4-port NICs (due to limited # of PCI
slots),
> can each of the
> 4 guest OS be bound to it''s own port on such NIC?
> Which 4-port NICs (if any) are suppported now? Are any more 
> planned/expected 
> to be supported for Xen 3.0 (as this plan depends on using AMD64 anyway)?

what about controlling the NICs from domain0 and using one physical 
interface per xen-bridge? Every domain will have its own bridge...

j.



-------------------------------------------------------
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Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. 
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https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel