VMware Solved: Unable to open kernel device
VMware Solved: Unable to open kernel device '\\.\VMCIDev\VMX'. Failed to start the virtual machine
Note: ESXi 5.1 has deprecated virtual machine to virtual machine communication part of Virtual Machine Communication Interface. The virtual machine to host part Virtual Machine Communication Interface is still enabled by default. For more information, see the VMCI Sockets 5.1 Release Notes. https://www.vmware.com/support/develo...
The Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI) is an infrastructure that provides fast and efficient communication between a virtual machine and the host operating system and between two or more virtual machines on the same host. The VMCI SDK facilitates development of applications that use the VMCI infrastructure. Without VMCI, virtual machines communicate with the host using the network layer. Using the network layer adds overhead to the communication. With VMCI communication overhead is minimal and different tasks that require that communication can be optimized. An internal network can transmit an average of slightly over 2Gbit/s using vmxnet3, VMCI can go up to nearly 10Gbit/s with 128k sized Queue pairs.
There are two types of communication:
Datagrams: connectionless – Similar to UDP Queue Pairs
Connection oriented – Similar to TCP
VMCI provides Socket APIs, which is similar to what is already used for TCP/UDP applications. IP addresses are replaced with VMCI ID numbers. For example, it is possible to port net perf to use VMCI sockets instead of TCP/UDP.
To enable communication between virtual machines that run on the same host:
