1. A method executed by at least one processor comprising: requesting access to storage resources by an application executing on an operating system; routing the access request to a storage virtual appliance using a storage virtual appliance block device driver; opening a logical connection between the storage resources and the operating system using a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCI-E) non-transparent bridge (NTB); and enabling data to be transferred between the operating system and the storage resources using direct memory access (DMA) over the logical connection, wherein the storage virtual appliance has access to a first port of the PCI-E non-transparent bridge and the storage virtual appliance block device driver has access to a second port of the PCI-E non-transparent bridge.