Patent attributes
Techniques for enabling live migration of VMs with passthrough PCI devices are provided. In one set of embodiments, a hypervisor of a host system can create a copy of a DMA buffer used by a VM of the host system and a passthrough PCI device of the VM. The hypervisor can further designate one of the DMA buffer or the copy of the DMA buffer as a vCPU buffer that is accessible by the VM, and designate the other of the DMA buffer or the copy of the DMA buffer as a device buffer that is accessible by the passthrough PCI device. The hypervisor can then synchronize the vCPU buffer and the device buffer with each other as the VM and passthrough PCI device interact with their respective buffers, and as part of the synchronization can intercept DMA work requests submitted by the VM/completed by the passthrough PCI device.