6.0.1

For specic information on seing up the iSCSI SAN, see Chapter 9, “Using ESXi with iSCSI SAN,” on
page 63.
Network-attached Storage (NAS)
Stores virtual machine les on remote le servers accessed over a standard TCP/IP network. The NFS client
built into ESXi uses Network File System (NFS) protocol version 3 and 4.1 to communicate with the
NAS/NFS servers. For network connectivity, the host requires a standard network adapter.
NFS Storage depicts a virtual machine using the NFS volume to store its les. In this conguration, the host
connects to the NFS server, which stores the virtual disk les, through a regular network adapter.
Figure 1‑4. NFS Storage
NAS appliance
NFS
virtual
machine
LAN
ethernet
NIC
Host
For specic information on seing up NFS storage, see “Understanding Network File System Datastores,”
on page 152.
Shared Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
Stores virtual machines on direct-aached SAS storage systems that oer shared access to multiple hosts.
This type of access permits multiple hosts to access the same VMFS datastore on a LUN.
Target and Device Representations
In the ESXi context, the term target identies a single storage unit that the host can access. The terms device
and LUN describe a logical volume that represents storage space on a target. Typically, the terms device and
LUN, in the ESXi context, mean a storage volume presented to the host from a storage target and available
for formaing.
Dierent storage vendors present the storage systems to ESXi hosts in dierent ways. Some vendors present
a single target with multiple storage devices or LUNs on it, while others present multiple targets with one
LUN each.
Chapter 1 Introduction to Storage
VMware, Inc. 17