On Fri, 3 Mar 2017 16:40:22 +0100 Gaetan Rivet <gaetan.ri...@6wind.com> wrote:
> This PMD intercepts and manages Ethernet device removal events issued by > slave PMDs and re-initializes them transparently when brought back so that > existing applications do not need to be modified to benefit from true > hot-plugging support. > > The stacked PMD approach shares many similarities with the bonding PMD but > with a different purpose. While bonding provides the ability to group > several links into a single logical device for enhanced throughput and > supports fail-over at link level, this one manages the sudden disappearance > of the underlying device; it guarantees applications face a valid device in > working order at all times. > > Each fail-safe instance is configured to run atop one or several > devices, with one defined as the preferred device. Hot-plug events are > handled on all of them, and Tx is always directed to the preferred device > if present or to the next available failover device (Rx is always performed > on all devices for simplicity). > > Moreover, the configured slaves (preferred or failover) do not need to be > present at initialization time and may appear later. > > Slaves configuration is continuously synchronized with that of the virtual > device, which exposes their common set of capabilities to the application. > Failure to apply the current configuration state to a slave for any reason > simply reschedules its initialization. > This looks interesting for SR-IOV VF support on Hyper-V. It would be good if the driver worked in interrupt mode as well.
