The present invention discloses a read/write path determining method and apparatus. The method is used by a physical host, where the physical host includes a hardware layer, a host host running on the hardware layer, and a virtual machine running on the host, and the host includes a block device and a virtual block device. The method includes: obtaining, by the host, a first read/write request of the virtual machine, where the first read/write request includes a first virtual address; searching for the first virtual address in an address translation information set, where the address translation information set includes a correspondence between a virtual address and information about a physical block device, and the information about the physical block device includes a read/write identifier; and determining to process the first read/write request by using the block device or the virtual block device according to the address translation information set and the first virtual address. According to the read/write path determining method and apparatus in embodiments of the present invention, a proper read/write path is determined according to a read/write request and an address translation information set, so that storage performance and a storage function can be simultaneously considered.