[HN Gopher] vDPA: Support for block devices in Linux and QEMU
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       vDPA: Support for block devices in Linux and QEMU
        
       Author : ingve
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2024-02-12 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (stefano-garzarella.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (stefano-garzarella.github.io)
        
       | gonzaloalvarez wrote:
       | > One of the significant benefits of vDPA is its strong
       | abstraction, enabling the implementation of virtio devices in
       | both hardware and software--whether in the kernel or user space.
       | This unification under a single framework, where devices appear
       | identical for QEMU facilitates the seamless integration of
       | hardware and software components.
       | 
       | I honestly don't know what this means. Is it faster? Is it more
       | secure? Why would I use this vDPA thing instead of the good'ol
       | virtio blk driver? Looking at the examples it certainly looks
       | more cumbersome to setup...
        
         | rwmj wrote:
         | Software block devices let you do all implement all sorts of
         | disk-like things in userspace. nbdkit is a more flexible
         | version of this (also compatible with qemu), so to get a
         | flavour of the types of things you can do just peruse the list
         | of nbdkit plugins: https://libguestfs.org/nbdkit.1.html#Plugins
        
       | roomey wrote:
       | Good timing considering the esxi news
       | https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
        
         | swozey wrote:
         | No more free at all? I learned virtualization w/ vmware gsx
         | long before I ever had a company to use it at.. Oh well,
         | vmwares irrelevant to me nowadays.
        
         | bpye wrote:
         | > Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom
         | has also decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor,
         | marking it as EOGA (End of General Availability).
         | 
         | So it's subscription or bust? Owch.
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-12 23:00 UTC)