6.0.1

Other storage virtualization capabilities that vSphere provides include Virtual SAN, Virtual Flash, Virtual
Volumes, and policy-based storage management. For information about Virtual SAN, see the Administering
VMware Virtual SAN.
Types of Physical Storage
The ESXi storage management process starts with storage space that your storage administrator preallocates
on dierent storage systems.
ESXi supports the following types of storage:
Local Storage
Stores virtual machine les on internal or directly connected external storage
disks.
Networked Storage
Stores virtual machine les on external storage disks or arrays aached to
your host through a direct connection or through a high-speed network.
Local Storage
Local storage can be internal hard disks located inside your ESXi host, or it can be external storage systems
located outside and connected to the host directly through protocols such as SAS or SATA.
Local storage does not require a storage network to communicate with your host. You need a cable
connected to the storage unit and, when required, a compatible HBA in your host.
The following illustration depicts a virtual machine using local SCSI storage.
Figure 1‑1. Local Storage
Host
VMFS
SCSI
virtual
machine
In this example of a local storage topology, the host uses a single connection to a storage disk. On that disk,
you can create a VMFS datastore, which you use to store virtual machine disk les.
Although this storage conguration is possible, it is not a recommended topology. Using single connections
between storage arrays and hosts creates single points of failure (SPOF) that can cause interruptions when a
connection becomes unreliable or fails. However, because the majority of local storage devices do not
support multiple connections, you cannot use multiple paths to access local storage.
ESXi supports a variety of local storage devices, including SCSI, IDE, SATA, USB, and SAS storage systems.
Regardless of the type of storage you use, your host hides a physical storage layer from virtual machines.
N You cannot use IDE/ATA or USB drives to store virtual machines.
Local storage does not support sharing across multiple hosts. Only one host has access to a datastore on a
local storage device. As a result, although you can use local storage to create virtual machines, it prevents
you from using VMware features that require shared storage, such as HA and vMotion.
vSphere Storage
14 VMware, Inc.