A VF driver is a software component that manages Virtual Functions (VFs) in a virtualized environment. VFs are software constructs that represent hardware resources, such as network interface cards or storage devices, that are partitioned and shared among multiple virtual machines (VMs).
The VF driver is responsible for communicating with the underlying physical hardware device and presenting the VFs to the operating system running inside each VM. It provides an interface for configuring and controlling the behavior of each VF, including setting up DMA mappings, handling interrupts, and managing power states.
In addition to providing access to hardware resources, VF drivers also play a critical role in maintaining security by enforcing isolation between VMs. They ensure that each VM can only access its assigned VFs and prevent unauthorized access or interference from other VMs on the same physical machine.
Examples of popular VF drivers include SR-IOV (Single Root I/O Virtualization) for networking devices and NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics) for storage devices.