All guest OS disk access goes through the virtual block device VBD
interface. This interface allows domains access to portions of block
storage devices visible to the the block backend device. The VBD
interface is a split driver, similar to the network interface
described above. A single shared memory ring is used between the
frontend and backend drivers for each virtual device, across which
IO requests and responses are sent.
Any block device accessible to the backend domain, including
network-based block (iSCSI, *NBD, etc), loopback and LVM/MD devices,
can be exported as a VBD. Each VBD is mapped to a device node in the
guest, specified in the guest's startup configuration.
