ALLOCATING NETWORK ADAPTER RESOURCES AMONG LOGICAL PARTITIONS

摘要

In an embodiment, a network adapter has a physical port that is multiplexed to multiple logical ports, which have default queues. The adapter also has other queues, which can be allocated to any logical port, and resources, which map tuples to queues. The tuples are derived from data in packets received via the physical port. The adapter determines which queue should receive a packet based on the received tuple and the resources. If the received tuple matches a resource, then the adapter stores the packet to the corresponding queue; otherwise, the adapter stores the packet to the default queue for the logical port specified by the packet. In response to receiving an allocation request from a requesting partition, if no resources are idle, a resource is selected for preemption that is already allocated to a selected partition. The selected resource is then allocated to the requesting partition.