Xen users - Jul 2009 - announcement: intelligent network switching between xen domains

Hi,

I''m writing on behalf of the LiSA Project team (http://lisa.ines.ro/).
LiSA is an open-source project that aims at building an intelligent
network switch on top of linux.

One of the applications that we find most interesting is using it
instead of traditional linux-bridge to deliver network connectivity to
xen guests. The advantages of LiSA over linux-bridge module are:

* built-in support for vlans (802.1q);
* minimum packet copy/change optimizations for broadcast/multicast (when
several tagged/untagged ports are involved)
* enhanced CLI for configuration/management of the switching engine (the
CLI is very similar to the Cisco IOS)

We''ve managed to integrate LiSA with xen (with respect to both xen
networking scripts and xen''s tcp/udp sum offload optimizations).

Pre-built packages of the latest LiSA version for Centos 5 / i686 are
available at:
http://lisa.ines.ro/download/lisa/rpm/centos/5/

Source code is available through the following git trees:
git://lisa.ines.ro/lisa.git
git://lisa.ines.ro/linux-2.6.git

and a git web interface is also available. For further details, see
http://lisa.ines.ro/ - the "Git Repositories" section.

Any feedback is welcome.

Thanks,

Radu Rendec
The LiSA Project Team


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Your news page hasn''t been updated in almost exactly a year.
http://lisa.ines.ro/news.html

On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 06:11, Radu Rendec <radu.rendec@ines.ro> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I''m writing on behalf of the LiSA Project team
(http://lisa.ines.ro/).
> LiSA is an open-source project that aims at building an intelligent
> network switch on top of linux.
>
> One of the applications that we find most interesting is using it
> instead of traditional linux-bridge to deliver network connectivity to
> xen guests. The advantages of LiSA over linux-bridge module are:
>
> * built-in support for vlans (802.1q);
> * minimum packet copy/change optimizations for broadcast/multicast (when
> several tagged/untagged ports are involved)
> * enhanced CLI for configuration/management of the switching engine (the
> CLI is very similar to the Cisco IOS)
>
> We''ve managed to integrate LiSA with xen (with respect to both xen
> networking scripts and xen''s tcp/udp sum offload optimizations).
>
> Pre-built packages of the latest LiSA version for Centos 5 / i686 are
> available at:
> http://lisa.ines.ro/download/lisa/rpm/centos/5/
>
> Source code is available through the following git trees:
> git://lisa.ines.ro/lisa.git
> git://lisa.ines.ro/linux-2.6.git
>
> and a git web interface is also available. For further details, see
> http://lisa.ines.ro/ - the "Git Repositories" section.
>
> Any feedback is welcome.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Radu Rendec
> The LiSA Project Team
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
>


-- 
[EOM]


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On Sat, 2009-07-04 at 11:37 -0700, Ryan Knapper wrote:
> Your news page hasn''t been updated in almost exactly a year.
> http://lisa.ines.ro/news.html
Yes, but the git trees have :)

We''ve been working very hard during the last couple of months to port
all previously implemented functionality to a completely new version of
the CLI. The userspace part was almost entirely rewritten and also the
kernel-userspace interface.

If you''re interested in this topic, perhaps you should have a look at
LiSA. It''s definitely worth a try ;)

Thanks,

Radu Rendec



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Hi,

On Sat, 2009-07-04 at 16:11 +0300, Radu Rendec wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I''m writing on behalf of the LiSA Project team
(http://lisa.ines.ro/).
> LiSA is an open-source project that aims at building an intelligent
> network switch on top of linux.
A look at the userspace code alone tells me that you have a very firm
grasp on what you''re doing.

You posted this to (AFAICT) xen-users only, why not xen-devel? 

Also, what is the latest xen-0 kernel that you are working with? Indeed,
the project site does need some updating.

Most users brave enough to venture beyond 2.6.18-8 are going to need
solid instructions, or (better) a pre patched xen + lisa kernel to
download and build. You won''t find many FC8 users here. 

Do you have a developers list? I''m going to try your patches against
Jaremy''s latest tree, I''m counting on breakage but it should
not be
difficult to fix .. net/ is a very shifty place :)

I''m working on trying it against a xen patched 2.6.25 kernel now. 

Cheers,
--Tim

---
Monkey + Typewriter = Echoreply ( http://echoreply.us )


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On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 01:53 +0800, Tim Post wrote:
> A look at the userspace code alone tells me that you have a very firm
> grasp on what you''re doing.
> 
> You posted this to (AFAICT) xen-users only, why not xen-devel? 
Hi,

Thanks for the reply :) We didn''t post to xen-devel because we thought
the project were interesting for xen deployments rather than xen
internals and development. But I''ll give it a try anyway. Do you think
the original message we posted on xen-users is well suited for xen-devel
(in exactly the same form)?
> Also, what is the latest xen-0 kernel that you are working with? Indeed,
> the project site does need some updating.
Our current development is on 2.6.29, but we also maintain 3 other
versions:
2.6.25
2.6.21
2.6.18

Since we only add a hook in the netdevice rx stack (and everything else
is in our own module), we expect it to apply and work on most kernel
versions.

We have mostly relied on fedora (and they removed dom0 support in their
kernel starting with FC9), so the latest xen patched kernel that we
actually tested is 2.6.21.
> Most users brave enough to venture beyond 2.6.18-8 are going to need
> solid instructions, or (better) a pre patched xen + lisa kernel to
> download and build. You won''t find many FC8 users here. 
Thanks for the tip. The site definitely needs updating and better
instructions.
> Do you have a developers list? I''m going to try your patches
against
> Jaremy''s latest tree, I''m counting on breakage but it
should not be
> difficult to fix .. net/ is a very shifty place :)
Yes, we do: http://lisa.ines.ro/mailman/listinfo/lisa-devel
It looks like you know your way around kernels and git. Perhaps the
easiest way to do it is to clone our git tree and try to rebase our
branch on top of whatever xen branch you are testing against.
> I''m working on trying it against a xen patched 2.6.25 kernel now. 
I hope you are not using either of the Centos rpms that we announced or
the FC8 2.6.25 rpms you found on our site. The patch in the 2.6.18
centos .src.rpm most probably won''t apply (since most skb members
changed from pointers to offsets between 2.6.18 and 2.6.25). The patch
in the 2.6.25 tree is an ancient version of lisa and I''m not even sure
if it contains the xen tcp sum offload adjustments.

So, if pulling directly from our git tree, keep in mind that only the
2.6.29, 2.6.25 and 2.6.18 branches are up-to-date. We plan to backport
on 2.6.21, but the branch is not yet complete.

Should you have any more questions or need further instructions on
deploying lisa, please feel free to ask directly.

Thanks,

Radu Rendec



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LiSA can act like VDE2 ??!! I mean, can I create a virtual uplink through
ssh, for examplo?!
Just like the following diagram:

http://wiki.virtualsquare.org/index.php/VDE_Basic_Networking

Look that "CrossCable"! Is that what I always want to do... but I
don''t know
how to connect my domU with the VDE2...   :-/

Thanks

2009/7/4 Radu Rendec <radu.rendec@ines.ro>
> Hi,
>
> I''m writing on behalf of the LiSA Project team
(http://lisa.ines.ro/).
> LiSA is an open-source project that aims at building an intelligent
> network switch on top of linux.
>
> One of the applications that we find most interesting is using it
> instead of traditional linux-bridge to deliver network connectivity to
> xen guests. The advantages of LiSA over linux-bridge module are:
>
> * built-in support for vlans (802.1q);
> * minimum packet copy/change optimizations for broadcast/multicast (when
> several tagged/untagged ports are involved)
> * enhanced CLI for configuration/management of the switching engine (the
> CLI is very similar to the Cisco IOS)
>
> We''ve managed to integrate LiSA with xen (with respect to both xen
> networking scripts and xen''s tcp/udp sum offload optimizations).
>
> Pre-built packages of the latest LiSA version for Centos 5 / i686 are
> available at:
> http://lisa.ines.ro/download/lisa/rpm/centos/5/
>
> Source code is available through the following git trees:
> git://lisa.ines.ro/lisa.git
> git://lisa.ines.ro/linux-2.6.git
>
> and a git web interface is also available. For further details, see
> http://lisa.ines.ro/ - the "Git Repositories" section.
>
> Any feedback is welcome.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Radu Rendec
> The LiSA Project Team
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
>

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I have no experience with VDE, but (from the quick look that I''ve had
at
the link you sent) I guess you can achieve similar functionality with
LiSA.

LiSA does not have anything similar to VDE''s "virtual wire",
but it has
native vlan support that you could use instead.

You could for instance use one vlan for each virtual link, then set up
LiSA to distribute the appropriate vlans to each guest machine. For any
guest machine where you plan to have more than one virtual link, you''ll
need vlan tagging support inside. For linux, the 8021q module will do.

Cheers,

Radu

On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 13:03 -0300, Thiago Camargo Martins Cordeiro
wrote:
> LiSA can act like VDE2 ??!! I mean, can I create a virtual uplink
> through ssh, for examplo?!
> 
> 
> Just like the following diagram:
> 
> 
> http://wiki.virtualsquare.org/index.php/VDE_Basic_Networking
> 
> 
> Look that "CrossCable"! Is that what I always want to do... but I
> don''t know how to connect my domU with the VDE2...   :-/
> 
> 
> Thanks


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