Once the adapter has been configured, the optimized virtual hardware is presented to the virtual machine guest. The drivers for the paravirtualized hardware adapters are included with VMware Tools. The paravirtualized hardware can be added to a virtual machine before VMware Tools is installed, but the hardware will not be available for use by the guest OS until VMware Tools is installed.

The VMXNET3 adapter provides higher network throughput with less host CPU overhead.

The PVSCSI adapter is suitable for I/O intensive applications. Like the VMXNET3 adapter, the PVSCSI adapter increases storage throughput with minimal host CPU overhead.