This application provides an IO request processing method, used in an external device. The external device includes a processor and a first hardware interface, and the first hardware interface is an interface that supports a PCIe protocol. The external device communicates with a physical host through the first hardware interface. One example method includes: The processor synchronizes, through the first hardware interface, queue information in storage space of a virtual machine running on the physical host to storage space of the external device, where the queue information includes one or more input/output IO requests; and the processor sends the one or more IO requests to a storage server or a network server for processing.