PCI Bridge Protocol Offload for Virtualized NIC Sharing
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Solution Overview
Problem
In virtualized network environments, the limitations of virtual NICs in providing advanced features like RDMA and iSCSI directly to guest operating systems (GOSs) hinder efficient resource utilization and protection, as they rely on intermediaries for data processing, leading to increased overhead and reduced efficiency.
Innovation Solution
A system and method for protocol offload and direct I/O with I/O sharing, where a single network interface card (NIC) handles data processing for multiple GOSs without intermediaries, enabling direct access to network resources and advanced features like TCP offload, RDMA, and iSCSI, while coordinating resource allocation and switching between GOSs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If a virtual NIC is used to provide network access to multiple GOSs, then resource consolidation and server efficiency are improved, but advanced networking features like RDMA and iSCSI cannot be provided directly to GOSs, increasing overhead and reducing performance
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a PCI bridge as an intermediary device between the physical NIC and the GOSs. The PCI bridge receives advanced networking feature requests from GOSs and forwards them to the physical NIC, enabling features like RDMA and iSCSI to function in virtualized environments without requiring direct GOS-NIC access. This mediator approach resolves the contradiction by maintaining both resource consolidation benefits and advanced feature availability.
2Use of energy by moving object
If a single physical NIC is shared among multiple GOSs through a hypervisor, then hardware resource utilization is improved, but I/O overhead increases due to multiple copy operations through the hypervisor and TGOS
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the I/O processing function from the hypervisor/TGOS layer and assigns it to the PCI bridge device. The PCI bridge directly handles data copy operations between GOS memory and the physical NIC buffer, eliminating the need for data to be copied through the hypervisor and TGOS. This extraction of the I/O handling function to a dedicated hardware component significantly reduces I/O overhead and time loss while maintaining efficient hardware resource utilization.
3Productivity
If multiple operating systems are consolidated into a single server, then server efficiency and resource utilization are improved, but system protection and isolation are reduced as failures can propagate across all services
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements segmentation by providing dedicated physical NIC resources to each GOS through the PCI bridge. Each GOS has its own buffer memory and I/O processing path, creating isolated segments that prevent failure propagation. When one GOS experiences a failure, it cannot affect other GOSs or the host system because each has dedicated hardware resources managed independently by the PCI bridge, thus maintaining both server efficiency and system protection.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for protocol offload and direct I/O with I/O sharing in a virtualized network environment are disclosed. Aspects of one method may include a plurality of GOSs sharing a single network interface circuitry, or a network interface card, (NIC) that may provide access to a network. The NIC may directly handle processing of data to be transmitted to the network and/or data received from the network for each of the GOSs without a TGOS for the GOSs handling the data to be transmitted to the network and/or data received from the network. The data may be copied directly from a buffer in the single NIC to an application buffer for one of the plurality of GOSs and/or directly from an application buffer for one of the plurality of GOSs to the buffer in the single NIC.