Hi John
for testing the API you do not need DNA/ZC drivers, you can use the ZC API 
(sample apps, balancing, etc.) with standard drivers (opening the device 
without the “zc:” prefix).

Alfredo

> On 18 Feb 2015, at 14:57, John Zachary <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Thank you for this information, Alfredo.
> 
> I am not worried about performance right now.  Our focus is to test some 
> PF_RING functionality for our application and see what we need to do to our 
> application to support PF_RING before we commit.  So, I am happy to do 
> everything in a guest VM (Centos7): install PF_RING, install DNA or ZC 
> drivers, and test our application under simulated conditions.  Right now, we 
> are happy to test either DNA or ZC (or both) just to prove things work, 
> mainly load balancing (packet hashing).  We will use tcpreplay to test our 
> application, not live traffic.  Once we are happy it works like we want, we 
> will move to a production-ready platform with real cards with ZC.
> 
> My challenge has been a disconnect between drivers on a guest VM and the 
> DNA/ZC drivers.  My first approach was to try Centos7 on VirtualBox with an 
> e1000 driver.  However, I can't seem to build the DNA e1000 driver from the 
> PF_RING source (make and compile errors) and there are no pre-built RPMs.  
> Also, reading through the source code, I notice that all of the scripts & 
> Makefile commands for building an e1000 driver are commented out.  So, I 
> assumed e1000 was unsupported.  
> 
> My next approach is to try an Amazon EC2 VM that supports either igb ixgbe, 
> and hopefully use the prebuilt ZC driver.  If that fails, I guess I will try 
> VMware.
> 
> To summarize, I really want to use PF_RING and DNA or ZC in a 
> proof-of-concept for our application to show others that it will work; 
> performance is not important to me right now.  Is my use case reasonable for 
> test-driving PF_RING DNA or ZC?  Am I missing something obvious, especially 
> with building a DNA e1000 driver on Virtualbox?
> 
> Many thanks in advance,
> John
> 
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 4:04 AM, Alfredo Cardigliano <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> Hi John
> e1000 cards are supported by DNA only,
> e1000e cards are supported by DNA and ZC,
> please note that:
> - even if you use DNA/ZC drivers in the guest os, you still have all the 
> overhead in the host os/hypervisor
>   (for 10G we use PCI-passthrough/Direct-IO with DNA/ZC for line-rate on VMs, 
> or ZC with a master
>   process on the host sending packets to a sw queue for zero-copy host-guest 
> communications)
> - you will not get a significative performance improvement at the rates 
> supported by e1000 cards
> - in most case e1000 cards are not able to do line-rate anyway
> 
> Alfredo
> 
> > On 16 Feb 2015, at 20:15, John Zachary <[email protected] 
> > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am looking for a link to the latest support of PF_RING with either ZC or 
> > DNA support on virtual guest machines.  We want to evaluate PF_RING for our 
> > application and wish to test it out.  I am trying to bring everything up on 
> > a Centos7 guest on VirtualBox 4.3.20r96996 with either virtio or intel 
> > 82545EM NIC support.  It seems that the latest version of PF_RING software 
> > doesn't support e1000 cards (and it looks like e1000e might be on its way 
> > out, too, yes?).  If anyone can point me towards a solution, either some 
> > way to force Vbox to work or suggest alternatives (VMware? something 
> > else?), I would really appreciate it.  I don't want to buy a license if the 
> > answer is "it doesn't work on VMware either" :)
> >
> > I've look all over the web to answer my questions before posting, assuming 
> > this has been asked before, but I don't find much information about PF_RING 
> > and virtualization in the user community.
> >
> > John
> > _______________________________________________
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> > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> > http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop-misc 
> > <http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop-misc>
> 
> 

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