An administrator has an application that requires connection directly to PCI devices through a virtual machine. What is a limitation of this configuration?

While passthrough devices must be configured on hosts where the VM can run, this is a placement constraint rather than a core functional limitation of the passthrough configuration itself.

When a VM uses DirectPath I/O (PCI passthrough), the hypervisor cannot save the state of the directly assigned PCI device, making snapshots technically impossible. The memory-mapped I/O regions and device state of a passthrough device cannot be captured by the snapshot mechanism. This is a hard limitation documented by VMware and disqualifies VMs with passthrough devices from using snapshot-dependent features like vSphere Replication.

The stated maximum of 18 DirectPath I/O devices is incorrect; VMware supports up to 8 passthrough PCI devices per virtual machine.

Multiple PCI controllers can be presented to a virtual machine, so restricting to one controller is not an actual limitation of DirectPath I/O.