Merge "Add documentation for SRIOV NIC agent (previously missing)"

doc/source/devref/l2_agents.rst

@@ -5,3 +5,4 @@ L2 Agent Networking
 
    openvswitch_agent
    linuxbridge_agent
+   sriov_nic_agent

doc/source/devref/sriov_nic_agent.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+======================================
+L2 Networking with SR-IOV enabled NICs
+======================================
+SR-IOV (Single Root I/O Virtualization) is a specification that allows
+a PCIe device to appear to be multiple separate physical PCIe devices.
+SR-IOV works by introducing the idea of physical functions (PFs) and virtual functions (VFs).
+Physical functions (PFs) are full-featured PCIe functions.
+Virtual functions (VFs) are “lightweight” functions that lack configuration resources.
+
+SR-IOV supports VLANs for L2 network isolation, other networking technologies
+such as VXLAN/GRE may be supported in the future.
+
+SR-IOV NIC agent manages configuration of SR-IOV Virtual Functions that connect
+VM instances running on the compute node to the public network.
+
+In most common deployments, there are compute and a network nodes.
+Compute node can support VM connectivity via SR-IOV enabled NIC. SR-IOV NIC Agent manages
+Virtual Functions admin state. In the future it will manage additional settings, such as
+quality of service, rate limit settings, spoofcheck and more.
+Network node will be usually deployed with either Open vSwitch or Linux Bridge to support network node functionality.
+
+
+Further Reading
+---------------
+
+* `Nir Yechiel - SR-IOV Networking – Part I: Understanding the Basics <http://redhatstackblog.redhat.com/2015/03/05/red-hat-enterprise-linux-openstack-platform-6-sr-iov-networking-part-i-understanding-the-basics/>`_
+* `SR-IOV Passthrough For Networking <https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/SR-IOV-Passthrough-For-Networking/>`_