1 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2 Copyright(c) 2010-2017 Intel Corporation.
4 Vhost_blk Sample Application
5 =============================
7 The vhost_blk sample application implemented a simple block device,
8 which used as the backend of Qemu vhost-user-blk device. Users can extend
9 the exist example to use other type of block device(e.g. AIO) besides
10 memory based block device. Similar with vhost-user-net device, the sample
11 application used domain socket to communicate with Qemu, and the virtio
12 ring (split or packed format) was processed by vhost_blk sample application.
14 The sample application reuse lots codes from SPDK(Storage Performance
15 Development Kit, https://github.com/spdk/spdk) vhost-user-blk target,
16 for DPDK vhost library used in storage area, user can take SPDK as
22 This section shows the steps how to start a VM with the block device as
23 fast data path for critical application.
25 Compiling the Application
26 -------------------------
28 To compile the sample application see :doc:`compiling`.
30 The application is located in the ``examples`` sub-directory.
32 You will also need to build DPDK both on the host and inside the guest
34 Start the vhost_blk example
35 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
37 .. code-block:: console
39 ./dpdk-vhost_blk -m 1024
41 .. _vhost_blk_app_run_vm:
46 .. code-block:: console
48 qemu-system-x86_64 -machine accel=kvm \
49 -m $mem -object memory-backend-file,id=mem,size=$mem,\
50 mem-path=/dev/hugepages,share=on -numa node,memdev=mem \
51 -drive file=os.img,if=none,id=disk \
52 -device ide-hd,drive=disk,bootindex=0 \
53 -chardev socket,id=char0,reconnect=1,path=/tmp/vhost.socket \
54 -device vhost-user-blk-pci,packed=on,chardev=char0,num-queues=1 \
58 You must check whether your Qemu can support "vhost-user-blk" or not,
59 Qemu v4.0 or newer version is required.
60 reconnect=1 means live recovery support that qemu can reconnect vhost_blk
61 after we restart vhost_blk example.
62 packed=on means the device support packed ring but need the guest kernel
64 Now Qemu commit 9bb73502321d46f4d320fa17aa38201445783fc4 both support the
65 vhost-blk reconnect and packed ring.