PCI passthrough

PCI passthrough is used to pass through PCI devices on the host to a virtual machine. This is primarily used to directly pass network interfaces on the host to a virtual machine for increased performance.

To enable PCI passthrough, you have to use the following steps:

  1. Enable Intel VT-d or AMD IOMMU in the BIOS and kernel:
    # vi /etc/sysconfig/grub
  2. Modify GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX= to append intel_iommu=on or amd_iommu=on:
    PCI passthrough
  3. Rebuild the grub2 configuration file as follows and then reboot the hypervisor:
    # grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
  4. Navigate to Hardware | PCI Host Device and select the PCI device to pass through:

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