VMware VMCI virtual machine communication interface
A virtual PCI device that VMware exposes to guest operating systems running under ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion, providing a fast datagram and shared-memory channel between the guest and the hypervisor (and between guests). It underpins parts of VMware Tools and various VMware guest-integration features on Linux VMs.
recommendation
It should stay because VMCI is the VMware-specific channel that VMware Tools and other guest agents use to talk to the ESXi host, and Broadcom/VMware are still shipping and supporting it in current vSphere 7.x and 8.x products in 2025. The code also continues to see steady upstream activity, with the most recent substantive change in October 2025, and there is no in-tree replacement that covers the same VMware host/guest interface.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
Upstream Kconfig identifies this as the VMware VMCI driver, a virtual device for high-speed host/guest communication in VMware environments.
- knowledge.broadcom.com
Broadcom/VMware KB documents VMCI driver installation issues in VMware Tools on vSphere ESXi 6.7/7.x/8.x, showing VMCI remains part of current VMware guest deployments.
- knowledge.broadcom.com
Broadcom/VMware KB describes current VMware Tools update workflows for ESXi 7.x/8.x clusters, supporting that VMware guest-tooling components such as VMCI are still maintained in contemporary deployments.
- knowledge.broadcom.com
Broadcom/VMware KB for Windows 11 on vSphere ESXi 8.x mentions VMware VMCI Host Device and VMCI Bus Device, confirming ongoing use in modern VMware guests.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell read of drivers/misc/vmw_vmci/Kconfig shows this is an actual VMware virtual-device driver, not helper code. Provided static history says 42 substantive commits in the last 5 years, 22 unique authors, and a latest substantive touch on 2025-10-22, which is active enough to rule out deprecation. I attempted lore-first checks with mcp__lore_http.lore_file_timeline, lore_path_mentions, lore_regex, and lore_nearest; the path-index returned no hits for a file lookup, regex/path queries timed out, and nearest-neighbour was unavailable because embeddings were not built, so removal-discussion evidence is inconclusive rather than positive. Vendor web-search evidence from Broadcom/VMware KBs shows VMCI is still present in current vSphere/VMware Tools ecosystems in 2025-era products, so this is not legacy-only hardware; it is a live virtualization niche. No natural in-tree replacement covers the same VMware-specific host/guest communication interface, so recommendation is keep.