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Table Of Contents
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Chapter 4 Managing Storage
YoucanusevCLIcommandstomanagethevirtualmachinefilesystemandstoragedevices.
VMFS.Usevmkfstoolstocreate,modify,andmanageVMFSvirtualdisksandrawdevicemappings.
See“ManagingtheVirtualMachineFileSystemwithvmkfstools”onpage 28foranintroductionandthe
vSphereStoragedocumentationforadetailedreference.
Datastores.Severalcommandsallowyoutomanagedatastoresandareusefulformultipleprotocols.
LUNs.Useesxcli storage coreorvicfg-scsidevscommandstodisplayavailableLUNsand
mappingsforeachVMFSvolumetoitscorrespondingpartition.See“ExaminingLUNs”onpage 40.
Pathmanagement.Useesxcli storage coreorvicfg-mpathcommandstolistinformationabout
FibreChanneloriSCSILUNsandtochangeapath’sstate.See“ManagingPaths”onpage 44.Usethe
ESXCLIcommandtoviewandmodifypathpolicies.See“ManagingPathPoliciesonpage 47.
Rescan.Useesxcli storage coreorvicfg-rescanadapter rescantoperformarescan
operationeachtimeyoureconfigureyourstoragesetup.See“ScanningStorageAdapters”on
page 58.
Storagedevices.Severalcommandsmanageonlyspecificstoragedevices.
NFSstorage.Useesxcli storage nfsorvicfg-nastomanageNASstoragedevices.See
“ManagingNFS/NASDatastores”onpage 51.
iSCSIstorage.Useesxcli iscsiorvicfg-iscsitomanagebothhardwareandsoftwareiSCSI.
See“ManagingiSCSIStorage”onpage 59.
Softwaredefinedstorage.vSpheresupportsseveraltypesofsoftwaredefinedstorage.
VirtualSANstorage.Usecommandsintheesxcli vsannamespacetomanageVirtualSAN.See
“MonitoringandManagingVirtualSANStorage”onpage 53.
VirtualFlashstorage.Usecommandsintheesxcli storage vflashnamespacetomanage
VMwarevSphereFlashReadCache.
Virtualvolumes.Virtualvolumesofferadifferentlayerofabstractionthandatastores.Asaresult,
finergrainedmanagementispossible..Usecommandsintheesxcli storage vvolnamespace.
Datastores
ESXihostsusestoragespaceonavarietyofphysicalstoragesystems,includinginternalandexternaldevices
andnetworkedstorage.Ahostcandiscoverstoragedevicestowhichithasaccessandformatthemas
datastores.Eachdatastoreisaspeciallogicalcontainer,analogoustoafilesystemonalogical
volume,where
thehostplacesvirtualdiskfilesandothervirtualmachinefiles.Datastoreshidespecificsofeachstorage
productandprovideauniformmodelforstoringvirtualmachinefiles.
Dependingonthetypeofstorageyouuse,datastorescanbebackedbythefollowingfilesystemformats:
VirtualMachineFileSystem(VMFS).Highperformancefilesystemoptimizedforstoringvirtual
machines.YourhostcandeployaVMFSdatastoreonanySCSIbasedlocalornetworkedstoragedevice,
includingFibreChannelandiSCSISANequipment.
AsanalternativetousingtheVMFSdatastore,yourvirtualmachinecanhavedirect
accesstorawdevices
anduseamappingfile(RDM)asaproxy.See“ManagingtheVirtualMachineFileSystemwith
vmkfstools”onpage 28.
NetworkFileSystem(NFS).FilesystemonaNASstoragedevice.ESXisupportsNFSversion3over
TCP/IP.ThehostcanaccessadesignatedNFSvolumelocatedonanNFSserver,mountthevolume,and
useitforanystorageneeds.
Storage Device Naming
Eachstoragedevice,orLUN,isidentifiedbyseveraldeviceidentifiernames.