VIRTUAL MACHINE ACCESS TO STORAGE VIA A MULTI-QUEUE IO STORAGE ADAPTER WITH OPTIMIZED CACHE AFFINITY AND PCPU LOAD BALANCING

A method is provided for use in a system that includes a host machine that includes multiple physical CPUs (PCPUs) and at least two cache nodes that are shared by different sets of the PCPUs, comprising: creating in a memory device multiple sets of lanes each lane set associated with a respective PCPU set; tracking levels of processing activity of the PCPUs of each PCPU set; using an MSIX vector value to associate lanes with PCPUs; receiving a IO request from any given PCPU from among the multiple PCPUs; and assigning the IO request to a respective lane based at least in part upon the PCPU set associated with the lane and PCPU processing activity levels.