VMQ Components
The following illustration shows the relationships among the various components in a virtual machine queue (VMQ) operating environment.
The preceding figure illustrates the following VMQ components:
Network Virtual Service Provider (NetVSP)
An NDIS driver that runs in the management operating system of the Hyper-V parent partition. This driver provides services to support networking access by the Hyper-V child partitions.
Note Starting with Windows Server 2008, the Hyper-V extensible switch component provides NetVSP support to the NetVSC components that run in the guest operating system. For more information about this component, see Hyper-V Extensible Switch.
Network Virtual Service Client (NetVSC)
An NDIS driver that runs in the guest operating system of a Hyper-V child partition. NetVSC exposes a virtualized view of the physical network adapter on the host computer. This virtualized device is known as the VM network adapter.
The NetVSC provides the following functionality:
Supports networking device functionality in Hyper-V child partitions.
Accesses the physical network adapter by passing messages over the virtual machine bus (VMBus) to the associated NetVSP driver. This driver runs in the management operating system of the Hyper-V parent partition.
Virtual Machine Bus (VMBus)
A virtual communications bus that passes control and data messages between the Hyper-V parent and child partitions.
Note In Hyper-V, a child partition is also known as a virtual machine (VM).
VM Bus Channel
A communications channel on the VMBus between a NetVSC in a Hyper-V child partition and the NetVSP in the Hyper-V parent partition.
VM Queue
A queue for received data. A network adapter that supports VMQ has hardware to route data to a VM queue.
VMQ Filter
A filter to test incoming data. A network adapter that supports VMQ uses filters to test packet data in order to assign the packet to a queue.