HYPER-V(4)

💻 HYPER-V(4) — hv_vmbus, the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Bus (VMBus) Driver 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

hv_vmbus — the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Bus (VMBus) Driver. That's the whole name, bestie, and it's giving "communication channel but make it hypervisor" 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

So you want to compile this driver into the kernel? Place the following lines in the system kernel configuration file, exactly like this, no edits:

device hyperv
device pci

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so <pink>hv_vmbus</pink> provides a high performance communication interface between guest and root partitions in Hyper-V. Hyper-V itself is a hypervisor-based virtualization technology from Microsoft, no cap. Hyper-V supports isolation in terms of a partition, and a partition is a logical unit of isolation, supported by the hypervisor, in which operating systems execute. Iconic little isolation bubble, honestly 🫧

The Microsoft hypervisor must have at least one parent, or root, partition, running Windows Server operating system. The virtualization stack runs in the parent partition and has direct access to the hardware devices. Then the root partition creates the child partitions which host the guest operating systems. Main character energy: the root partition makes the whole friend group 💅

Child partitions do not have direct access to other hardware resources. Instead they are presented a virtual view of the resources, as virtual devices (VDevs). Requests to those virtual devices are redirected either via the VMBus or the hypervisor to the devices in the parent partition, which handles the requests. So the child partitions ask nicely and the parent partition does the actual hardware stuff ✨

The VMBus is a logical inter-partition communication channel. The parent partition hosts Virtualization Service Providers (VSPs) which communicate over the VMBus to handle device access requests from child partitions. Child partitions host Virtualization Service Consumers (VSCs) which redirect device requests to VSPs in the parent partition via the VMBus. The Hyper-V VMBus driver defines and implements the interface that facilitates high performance bi-directional communication between the VSCs and VSPs. All VSCs utilize the VMBus driver. That's the whole squad using the same group chat, tbh 🫶

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

Go read these next, bestie:

• hv_netvsc(4)
• hv_storvsc(4)
• hv_utils(4)

📜 HISTORY 📜

Support for hv_vmbus first appeared in FreeBSD 10.0. The driver was developed through a joint effort between Citrix Incorporated, Microsoft Corporation, and Network Appliance Incorporated. Collaboration slay 🤝

👑 AUTHORS 👑

FreeBSD support for hv_vmbus was first added by the Microsoft BSD Integration Services Team <bsdic@microsoft.com>. Say thank you 💖

And that's the whole vibe. Source/version: Debian; date: September 10, 2013; footer tag: HYPER-V(4) — catch you in the group chat, bestie 🎀