Summary of EN145 Webinar: Multi-Host, Multi-Root and SR-IOV

00:00:00 - 00:15:00

The video provides a high-level introduction to multi-host, multi-root, and SR-IOV configurations, discussing the benefits and features of each. It also covers traditional multi-host implementations, and shows how SR-IOV can be used to provide direct hardware access to multiple virtual machines.

• 00:00:00 This video provides a high-level introduction to multi-host, multi-route and SR-IOV configurations. The topics covered include multi-host basics, features and benefits, pcie bifurcation and dynamic configuration, srov, and multi-host nic configurations. The video also covers traditional multi-host implementations, showing a 4x4 configuration with four hosts by four lanes each connected to a 100 gig multi-host nic.
• 00:05:00 In this video, the hosts will each see that there is a hundred gig link, but the next firmware is used to provide host isolation and ensure relative fairness via traffic shaping. This fairness means that the firmware will prevent any single host from utilizing more than its fair share of the total bandwidth. Each host is really limited to around 25 gig each in this case. There are some inherent to this design, such as flow control changing speeds etc., which will impact all hosts. Finally, from the systems perspective, each host sees a link speed of 25 gig, which is dedicated in this host.
• 00:10:00 The video discusses the differences between traditional virtualized servers, where each virtual machine is assigned a physical adapter, and servers with srov, which allows a single broadcom thor pf to be partitioned to advertise up to 256 virtual functions and each virtual function has its own pcie config space and shares an external physical network port. virtuozzo's srov is similar to pci passthrough in that it provides a vm with direct access to hardware, as well as reducing the workload on the hypervisor. However, srov takes pcie pass-through to the next level by allowing a nick pf to pass through direct hardware access to many vms at the same time.
• 00:15:00 This YouTube video provides an overview of multi-host, multi-root, and SR-IOV configurations.