To IOV Or Not To IOV?
Perhaps the biggest challenge ahead for server virtualization lies in the problem of providing I/O resources to multiple virtual machines. At present, devices such as NICs, SCSI adapters and Fibre Channel HBAs are capable of speaking to only one OS at a time. This means that when a number of VMs need disk or network access at the same time, a bottleneck can occur. What makes IOV (I/O Virtualization) important to IT managers are the substantial performance benefits it promises by reducing the CPU utilization required to support network and storage in a virtual server environment.
Hardware-based solutions for problems like these are usually best, and the increased adoption of the serial-based PCI Express interface for servers has offered a new opportunity for managing I/O contention in a virtualized environment. IOV technology will let PCIe-based adapters present multiple, physical interfaces that can be addressed to individual VMs. The key to this is PCIe, and the international governing body of the PCI interface--the PCI SIG--is in the process of outlining standards for IOV PCIe devices.
There are plans for single-root IOV, where multiple VMs on a single server share access to devices in that physical system, as well as multiple-root systems such as blades, where multiple physical servers and VMs may share a single high-performance resource. There is also a specification for PCI address translation, a necessity for extending PCI as a networked fabric and supporting the switched PCI topologies such as those proposed by NextIO and the Advanced Switching Interface SIG.
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