What Does Virtual I/O (VIO) Mean?
Virtual I/O (VIO) is a technique used in enterprise environments to lower costs, improve performance and make server management easy and simple. The virtual I/O methodology allows a single physical adapter card to be seen as multiple virtual network interface cards (NICs) and virtual host bus adapters (HBAs), which operate just like conventional NICs and HBAs.Virtual I/O may be known as input/output (I/O) virtualization.
Techopedia Explains Virtual I/O (VIO)
In virtualized environments, server I/O plays a major role in deploying the server effectively and successfully. Virtualized servers are capable of running multiple applications at a time, and there is a constant demand for more bandwidth and connections to multiple networks and storage devices. Virtual I/O methodology helps in removing performance bottlenecks by binding I/O to a single connection. This single virtual I/O connection usually has a bandwidth that exceeds the server’s I/O capacity. In virtualized servers running I/O-intensive applications, the virtual I/O technique can help increase virtual machine performance as well as the number of virtual machines per server. Some of the important features of virtual I/O include:
