6.0.2

Table Of Contents
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Tiered storage, which allows you to distribute virtual disks in the View environment across high-
performance storage and lower-cost storage tiers, to maximize performance and cost savings
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Local storage on the ESXi host for the virtual machine swap files in the guest operating system
Compatible vSphere 5.0 and 5.1 or Later Features
With vSphere 5.0 or a later release, you can use the following features:
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With the View storage accelerator feature, you can configure ESXi hosts to cache virtual machine disk
data.
Using this content-based read cache (CBRC) can reduce IOPS and improve performance during boot
storms, when many machines start up and run anti-virus scans at the same time. Instead of reading the
entire OS from the storage system over and over, a host can read common data blocks from cache.
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If remote desktops use the space-efficient disk format available with vSphere 5.1 and later, stale or
deleted data within a guest operating system is automatically reclaimed with a wipe and shrink
process.
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You can deploy a desktop pool on a cluster that contains up to 32 ESXi hosts, with certain restrictions.
Replica disks must be stored on VMFS5 or later datastores or NFS datastores. If you store replicas on a
VMFS version earlier than VMFS5, a cluster can have at most eight hosts. OS disks and persistent disks
can be stored on NFS or VMFS datastores.
Compatible vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or Later Features
With vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or a later release, you can use Virtual SAN, which virtualizes the local physical
solid-state disks and hard disk drives available on ESXi hosts into a single datastore shared by all hosts in a
cluster. Virtual SAN provides high-performance storage with policy-based management, so that you specify
only one datastore when creating a desktop pool, and the various components, such as virtual machine files,
replicas, user data, and operating system files, are placed on the appropriate solid-state drive (SSD) disks or
direct-attached hard disks (HDDs).
Virtual SAN also lets you manage virtual machine storage and performance by using storage policy profiles.
If the policy becomes noncompliant because of a host, disk, or network failure, or workload changes, Virtual
SAN reconfigures the data of the affected virtual machines and optimizes the use of resources across the
cluster. You can deploy a desktop pool on a cluster that contains up to 32 ESXi hosts.
NOTE Virtual SAN is compatible with the View storage accelerator feature but not with the space-efficient
disk format feature, which reclaims disk space by wiping and shrinking disks.
Using Virtual SAN for High-Performance Storage and Policy-Based
Management
VMware Virtual SAN is a software-defined storage tier, available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or a later
release, that virtualizes the local physical storage disks available on a cluster of vSphere hosts. You specify
only one datastore when creating a desktop pool, and the various components, such as virtual machine files,
replicas, user data, and operating system files, are placed on the appropriate solid-state drive (SSD) disks or
direct-attached hard disks (HDDs).
Virtual SAN implements a policy-based approach to storage management. When you use Virtual SAN,
View defines virtual machine storage requirements, such as capacity, performance, and availability, in the
form of default storage policy profiles, which you can modify. Storage is provisioned and automatically
configured according to the assigned policies. You can use Virtual SAN for either linked-clone desktop
pools or full-clone desktop pools.
Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View
182 VMware, Inc.