Re: [virtio-dev] [PATCH] Add virtio parameter server device specification

[Hao Chen <chenhaosjtuacm@google.com>]

> Can you share a bit about the reason for defining a new VIRTIO device
> instead of running an existing key-value store over virtio-vsock or
> virtio-net?

The reason for defining a virtio-parameter-server device is we are interacting
with some devices in a "key-value store" pattern. For example, we interact with
"vehicle device" in Android using this pattern.

Ad-hoc protocol over vsock to a k-v store works, but we want to
standardize these
types of devices so that the VM doesn't need to know the
vendor-specific key-value
protocols for a specific device implementation.

Thanks,
Hao

On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 7:46 AM Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 05:33:17PM -0700, Hao Chen wrote:
> > This patch introduces a new type of device: parameter server. The device
> > acts as a key-value store and the driver can read from, write to or
> > subscribe to the properties in the server.
>
> Can you share a bit about the reason for defining a new VIRTIO device
> instead of running an existing key-value store over virtio-vsock or
> virtio-net?
>
> I'm not against adding this new device but I would like to understand
> what the advantages are.
>
> Thanks,
> Stefan