diff --git a/docs/interop/vhost-user.rst b/docs/interop/vhost-user.rst
index d6085f7045..7fc693521e 100644
--- a/docs/interop/vhost-user.rst
+++ b/docs/interop/vhost-user.rst
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+.. _vhost_user_proto:
+
 ===================
 Vhost-user Protocol
 ===================
diff --git a/docs/system/device-emulation.rst b/docs/system/device-emulation.rst
index 8adf05f606..7afcfd8064 100644
--- a/docs/system/device-emulation.rst
+++ b/docs/system/device-emulation.rst
@@ -86,4 +86,5 @@ Emulated Devices
    devices/net.rst
    devices/nvme.rst
    devices/usb.rst
+   devices/vhost-user.rst
    devices/virtio-pmem.rst
diff --git a/docs/system/devices/vhost-user.rst b/docs/system/devices/vhost-user.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..86128114fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/system/devices/vhost-user.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+.. _vhost_user:
+
+vhost-user back ends
+--------------------
+
+vhost-user back ends are way to service the request of VirtIO devices
+outside of QEMU itself. To do this there are a number of things
+required.
+
+vhost-user device
+===================
+
+These are simple stub devices that ensure the VirtIO device is visible
+to the guest. The code is mostly boilerplate although each device has
+a ``chardev`` option which specifies the ID of the ``--chardev``
+device that connects via a socket to the vhost-user *daemon*.
+
+vhost-user daemon
+=================
+
+This is a separate process that is connected to by QEMU via a socket
+following the :ref:`vhost_user_proto`. There are a number of daemons
+that can be built when enabled by the project although any daemon that
+meets the specification for a given device can be used.
+
+Shared memory object
+====================
+
+In order for the daemon to access the VirtIO queues to process the
+requests it needs access to the guest's address space. This is
+achieved via the ``memory-backend-file`` or ``memory-backend-memfd``
+objects. A reference to a file-descriptor which can access this object
+will be passed via the socket as part of the protocol negotiation.
+
+Currently the shared memory object needs to match the size of the main
+system memory as defined by the ``-m`` argument.
+
+Example
+=======
+
+First start you daemon.
+
+.. parsed-literal::
+
+  $ virtio-foo --socket-path=/var/run/foo.sock $OTHER_ARGS
+
+The you start your QEMU instance specifying the device, chardev and
+memory objects.
+
+.. parsed-literal::
+
+  $ |qemu_system| \\
+      -m 4096 \\
+      -chardev socket,id=ba1,path=/var/run/foo.sock \\
+      -device vhost-user-foo,chardev=ba1,$OTHER_ARGS \\
+      -object memory-backend-memfd,id=mem,size=4G,share=on \\
+      -numa node,memdev=mem \\
+        ...
+