There is disclosed an example of a computing apparatus for providing a hardware-assisted virtual switch on a host, including: a hardware virtual switch (vSwitch) circuit; and a hardware virtual host (vHost) circuit, the vHost circuit having an interface driver specific to the hardware vSwitch and configured to provide a vHost data plane to: provide a plurality of hardware queues to communicatively couple the hardware vSwitch to a guest virtual function (VF); and present to a virtual network driver of the guest VF an interface that is backward compatible with a software network interface.