VMware Direct Path allows a virtual machine to control a physical network adapter. This allows existing appliance applications to be transferred to a virtual environment.

This is the first step in consolidation. To the application, it still appears as if it is running on its own server with full control of the intelligent network adapter. The driver software has been updated to support VMware Direct Path, but otherwise, no changes need to be made. This can be repeated for multiple network appliances.

As can be seen, each network appliance can be based on a different operating system and execution environment, but still be supported on the same physical server. The only restriction is that each virtual machine needs its own network adapter as only one virtual machine can control a given network adapter at one time.