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
     <vdasahar@gmail.com>.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6        February 10, 2018       FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6