[vbox-dev] Pursuing virtio block driver project

[Alexey Eromenko]

To my knowledge,  VirtIO block device is only a bit faster than emulated
SCSI, according to some Red Hat KVM benchmark I'we seen  (and done)  years
ago. (Between KVM VirtIO block device and KVM SCSI). Sadly no results
saved. But you can redo the benchmark before you develop code.

Another thing: VirtIO network in VirtualBox was found to be significantly
slower than in KVM, by a factor of 3x. Maybe the bottleneck, if it still
exists, can be found and fixed. Like 400 mbps vs 1100 mbps, a benchmark I
did around 2009-2010, with old versions of both on Core 2 CPU.

Plus,  I do have VirtIO network drivers for Windows guests. @_@

I don't know if it is be worth the effort to develop such a system (VirtIO
block), but you are free to try...

Best wishes,
-Technologov
On Nov 18, 2015 5:41 AM, "Subodh Asthana" <sasthana at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>
> We are students studying at Carnegie Mellon University, as part of our
> course project for Operating System Practicum
> <https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~412/> we wanted to pursue writing virtio block
> driver support for VirtualBox. We found the below thread in the developer
> community (forum) which indicates that virtio block support has not been
> done yet.
>
>
>
>
> https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30869&sid=79168a99014f0c7921f9caa10e898a17&start=15
>
>
>
> We checked in the latest source code and found a file VirtioBlk.c in the
> path src/VBox/Devices/EFI/Firmware/OvmfPkg, which seems to implement EFI
> BLOCK IO PROTOCOL. Also, there is file VirtioNet.c (in same path) which
> seems to implement EFI SIMPLE NETWORK PROTOCOL.
>
>
>
> There is support for backend virtio network driver but no support for
> backend virtio block driver. We are curious as to why there is still no
> support for backend virtio block drivers? Is there is any specific reason
> for the same?
>
>
>
> Thanks and Regards,
>
> Subodh Asthana
>
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>
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