VhostNET

Request to add new type of network interface / model to Cloudmin configuration based on VhostNET from RedHat. I test it and it provides better latency (10% less than e1000 on my system) and greater throughput (8x the normal virtio) in real. It is realy easy to configure by command, but I can not use Cloudmin to do it, neither configuration file in /etc/webmin/servers. Because it define network by others parameters and Cloudmin config is not designed to this usage.

My tests report rapid increase network preformance between 2 VMs or VM and KVM host. For emaple iperf test: virtio: 0.0-10.0 sec 4.38 GBytes 3.76 Gbits/sec virtio + vhost: 0.0-10.0 sec 30.9 GBytes 26.5 Gbits/sec

Example of command argument: -net nic,model=virtio,macaddr=00:16:3e:00:01:01,netdev=nic-0 -netdev tap,id=nic-0,script=/root/ifup-br0,downscript=/root/ifdown-br0,vhost=on

Ubuntu need to load module first, but it should be simple change in Cloudmin install script: root:~# modprobe vhost_net root:~# lsmod | grep vhost vhost_net 27606 0 root:~# echo vhost_net >> /etc/modules

Some article about it: http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/VhostNet