[ovs-dev] MacVTap support in OVS

Suresh Kumar Reddy Reddygari Suresh.Reddy at emulex.com
Fri May 2 10:04:39 UTC 2014



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jesse Gross [mailto:jesse at nicira.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2014 10:07 PM
> To: Suresh Kumar Reddy Reddygari
> Cc: dev at openvswitch.org
> Subject: Re: [ovs-dev] MacVTap support in OVS
> 
> On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 2:00 AM, Suresh Kumar Reddy Reddygari
> <Suresh.Reddy at emulex.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Is MacVTap support there in OVS. If not, is there any plan to support it.
> 
> No.
> 
> What are you trying to do?

Hi Jesse,

As you know, Hypervisors like Xen/Citrix/KVM typically host one or more virtual machines (VMs) and provide network
connectivity to the VMs by connecting to the uplink Ethernet interface via a bridge module such as Linux Bridge or Open vSwitch (OVS.)  The Hypervisors (citrix) configure the uplink interface in MAC and VLAN promiscuous mode. But the MacVTap driver does not configure the up-link Ethernet interface in promiscuous mode. Instead, it programs the up-link Ethernet interface with the MAC addresses and VLANs used by the virtual NICs in the VMs.
Please correct me if I am wrong.

There are some advantages by using MacVTap. Hence I am looking for MacVTap support in OVS.

Why are we not supporting MacVTap in OVS ? Are there any disadvantages ? 

Thanks,
Suresh.


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