VMCI(4) FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual VMCI(4)
NAME
vmci - VMware Virtual Machine Communication Interface
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your
kernel configuration file:
device vmci
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the
following line in loader.conf(5):
if_vmci_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
The vmci driver provides support for the VMware Virtual Machine
Communication Interface (VMCI) in virtual machines by VMware.
VMCI allows virtual machines to communicate with host kernel modules and
the VMware hypervisors. User level applications in a virtual machine can
use VMCI through vSockets (also known as VMCI Sockets and not included in
this kernel module), a socket address family designed to be compatible
with UDP and TCP at the interface level. Today, VMCI and vSockets are
used by various VMware Tools components inside the guest for zero-config,
network-less access to VMware host services. In addition to this,
VMware's users are using vSockets for various applications, where network
access of the virtual machine is restricted or non-existent. Examples of
this are VMs communicating with device proxies for proprietary hardware
running as host applications and automated testing of applications
running within virtual machines.
In a virtual machine, VMCI is exposed as a regular PCI device. The
primary communication mechanisms supported are a point-to-point
bidirectional transport based on a pair of memory-mapped queues, and
asynchronous notifications in the form of datagrams and doorbells. These
features are available to kernel level components such as vSockets
through the VMCI kernel API. In addition to this, the VMCI kernel API
provides support for receiving events related to the state of the VMCI
communication channels, and the virtual machine itself.
SEE ALSO
socket(2), pci(9)
VMware vSockets Documentation,
https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vmci-sdk/.
HISTORY
The vmci driver first appeared in FreeBSD 12.0.
AUTHORS
The vmci driver and man page were written by Vishnu Dasa
<
[email protected]>.
FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8 February 10, 2018 FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8