About This Book

The VMware® vSockets Programming Guide describes how to program virtual machine communications interface sockets. The vSockets API facilitates fast and efficient communication between guest virtual machines and their host. VMware vSockets are built on the VMCI device.

Revision History

VMware revises this guide with each release of the product or when necessary. A revised version can contain minor or major changes. Revision History summarizes the significant changes in each version of this guide.

Revision History

Revision	Description
2016-11-15	Final version for the ESXi 6.5 release.
2015-05-21	Clarified security profile regarding unrestricted = true option.
2014-09-29	Name changed from VMCI Sockets to vSockets for the ESXi 6.0 release.
2013-08-30	Manual slightly revised for the ESXi 5.5 release.
2012-07-19	Guest-to-guest communication dedocumented for the ESXi 5.1 release.
2012-01-05	Windows header file now in Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\vmci\sockets\include.
2011-07-20	Manual revised for the Workstation 8.0 release and for the ESXi 5.0 release.
2010-05-21	Manual revised for the Workstation 7.1 release and for ESX/ESXi 4.x releases.
2009-10-20	Manual revised slightly for the Workstation 7.0 release.
2009-05-15	Revised manual, including host-to-guest stream socket support, for the ESX/ESXi 4.0 release.
2008-08-15	Released manual, with socket options, for VMware Workstation 6.5 and VMware Server 2.0 products.
2008-06-20	Draft of this manual for the VMware Workstation 6.5 Beta 2 and VMware Server 2.0 RC1 releases.

Intended Audience

This manual is intended for programmers who are developing applications using vSockets to create C or C++ networking applications for guest operating systems running on VMware hosts. VMware vSockets are based on TCP sockets.

This guide assumes that you are familiar with Berkeley sockets or Winsock, the Windows implementation of sockets. If you are not familiar with sockets, Appendix: Learning More About Sockets provides pointers to learning resources.

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VMware Technical Publications Glossary

VMware Technical Publications provides a glossary of terms that might be unfamiliar to you. For definitions of terms as they are used in VMware technical documentation go to http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.