For a virtual machine with very high network I/O requirements, DirectPath I/O allows a physical network adapter to be passed through directly to the virtual machine.

The following screenshot shows how a virtual machine is provided direct access to a physical network card with DirectPath I/O:

When DirectPath I/O is used, the network adapter is only made available to the virtual machine that it is passed to, and cannot be shared with other virtual machines. The full bandwidth capacity of the network adapter is available to the virtual machine. Because a virtual machine with DirectPath I/O configured is dependent on the physical network card in the host, it cannot be moved to other hosts using vMotion, nor can it be protected using VMware HA.