Evaluating standard-based self-virtualizing devices: A performance study on 10 GbE NICs with SR-IOV support

摘要: Virtual machine (VM) technologies have made much progress in improving the efficiency of virtualizing CPU and memory. However, achieving high performance for I/O virtualization remains a challenge, especially speed networking devices such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) NICs, commonly used software-based approaches usually suffer significant degradation compared with native hardware. One promising approach to address issue is use single root (SR-IOV) which been standardized by PCI-SIG. With SR-IOV, PCI Express (PCIe) device can present itself multiple virtual devices. By dedicating VM, it possible VM access hardware directly, thus reducing overheads context/control switches extra memory copies. SR-IOV comes its limitations requiring special support increased complexity tasks checkpointing, migration, record/reply. Therefore, very important us fully understand benefit before adopting it. Unfortunately, there exists little previous work provides information. In this paper, we detailed evaluation GbE PCIe from Neterion KVM (Kernelbased Machine) environment. Our focus not just metrics bandwidth latency, but also other aspects system utilization, access, exits, host/guest interrupts. We studied several factors that affect both virtualized systems. These include issues MTU size, processor versus processors, IRQ affinity, distribution. experiments show hardware-based superior KVM. achieve close line rate TCP communication (9.3 Gbps) transmitting (Tx) receiving (Rx) standard 1500 byte MTU, although does consume more cycles than (non-virtualized) case. Overall, our demonstrates has great potential