On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 3:04 AM, Suresh Kumar Reddy Reddygari <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Jesse Gross [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2014 10:07 PM >> To: Suresh Kumar Reddy Reddygari >> Cc: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: [ovs-dev] MacVTap support in OVS >> >> On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 2:00 AM, Suresh Kumar Reddy Reddygari >> <[email protected]> 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 ?
macvtap is a parallel mechanism for connecting VMs. It does not make sense to "support" it in OVS. It is theoretically possible to have OVS configure MAC and VLAN filters in the NIC. However, in most cases the upstream switch will flood relatively few unknown packets so the advantages are minimal. _______________________________________________ dev mailing list [email protected] http://openvswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
