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

[Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>]

On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 12:28:14PM -0700, Hao Chen wrote:
> > 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 for explaining. Would publishing a k-v store protocol spec for
use with vsock? That way it's a well-known protocol that anyone wishing
to use k-v store functionality can use.

One nice effect of defining a protocol over vsock instead of a new
VIRTIO device is that implementation could be as simple as a
Python/Go/Rust/etc library that's easy to integrate into applications. A
VIRTIO device is more low-level and complex, making it more costly for
others to implement.

Stefan

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