Administrator Guide
7 Dell FS8600 with VMware vSphere Deployment and Configuration Best practices
2 Introduction
In vSphere-based solutions, virtual machine data is stored in a set of files holding information such as virtual hardware
configuration, virtual hard disks and snapshot data. ESX hosts store this data in logical data containers called
hard drives or in external storage systems.
External storage system options supported by vSphere include block devices presenting LUNs (via iSCSI or Fiber
Channel) formatted with VMwareVMFS file system, and external file systems that support remote access via NFS
(Network File System protocol). The later are incorporated into the virtualization solution by ESX hosts, which are able
to mount folders exported by the external file system (or NFS exports) as datastores.
This document addresses the deployment of the FS8600 as a complete storage solution for a vSphere platform
implementation. As such, the FS8600 can act as the storage both for virtual machine data files via NFS (datastores) and
virtual machine user files via NFS and/or CIFS.
The recommenations in this guide are not specific to any version of ESX or ESXi. The same recommendations apply
regardless of ESX/ESXi version.