VMCI Sockets 1.0 Release Notes
Released 21 May 2009
This document contains the following sections:
About VMCI Sockets
Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI).
ESX/ESXi 4.0 incorporates a new virtual device
to facilitate high-speed communication between virtual machines and the hypervisor,
or between virtual machines that reside on the hypervisor host.
VMCI does not rely on in-guest networking.
The VMCI Sockets library offers a convenient interface for using this device.
VMCI Sockets API.
First introduced in VMware Workstation 6.5 and VMware Server 2.0,
VMCI Sockets is a convenience API for the VMCI device.
With minimal code modifications,
VMCI Sockets can provide fast communication between guest virtual machines and their host,
as well as between guest virtual machines.
New in This Release
On the ESX/ESXi 4.0 product platforms, both datagram and stream sockets are supported
between host and guest, and from guest to guest.
On VMware Server 2.0 and VMware Workstation 6.5, stream sockets are not supported
between host and guest, so you must use datagram sockets instead.
Known Issues and Workarounds
Any application that creates two threads,
one that makes a blocking socket call such as recv()
while another thread closes the same socket, can crash its guest virtual machine.
The workaround is for applications to handle one socket per thread,
or to open and close sockets from the main process before and after multithreading.
Last updated 29 April 2009 5:00 pm
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