6.7
Table Of Contents
- vSphere Storage
- Contents
- About vSphere Storage
- Introduction to Storage
- Getting Started with a Traditional Storage Model
- Overview of Using ESXi with a SAN
- Using ESXi with Fibre Channel SAN
- Configuring Fibre Channel Storage
- Configuring Fibre Channel over Ethernet
- Booting ESXi from Fibre Channel SAN
- Booting ESXi with Software FCoE
- Best Practices for Fibre Channel Storage
- Using ESXi with iSCSI SAN
- Configuring iSCSI Adapters and Storage
- ESXi iSCSI SAN Recommendations and Restrictions
- Configuring iSCSI Parameters for Adapters
- Set Up Independent Hardware iSCSI Adapters
- Configure Dependent Hardware iSCSI Adapters
- Configure the Software iSCSI Adapter
- Configure iSER Adapters
- Modify General Properties for iSCSI or iSER Adapters
- Setting Up Network for iSCSI and iSER
- Using Jumbo Frames with iSCSI
- Configuring Discovery Addresses for iSCSI Adapters
- Configuring CHAP Parameters for iSCSI Adapters
- Configuring Advanced Parameters for iSCSI
- iSCSI Session Management
- Booting from iSCSI SAN
- Best Practices for iSCSI Storage
- Managing Storage Devices
- Storage Device Characteristics
- Understanding Storage Device Naming
- Storage Rescan Operations
- Identifying Device Connectivity Problems
- Enable or Disable the Locator LED on Storage Devices
- Erase Storage Devices
- Working with Flash Devices
- About VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache
- Working with Datastores
- Types of Datastores
- Understanding VMFS Datastores
- Upgrading VMFS Datastores
- Understanding Network File System Datastores
- Creating Datastores
- Managing Duplicate VMFS Datastores
- Increasing VMFS Datastore Capacity
- Administrative Operations for Datastores
- Set Up Dynamic Disk Mirroring
- Collecting Diagnostic Information for ESXi Hosts on a Storage Device
- Checking Metadata Consistency with VOMA
- Configuring VMFS Pointer Block Cache
- Understanding Multipathing and Failover
- Failovers with Fibre Channel
- Host-Based Failover with iSCSI
- Array-Based Failover with iSCSI
- Path Failover and Virtual Machines
- Pluggable Storage Architecture and Path Management
- Viewing and Managing Paths
- Using Claim Rules
- Scheduling Queues for Virtual Machine I/Os
- Raw Device Mapping
- Storage Policy Based Management
- Virtual Machine Storage Policies
- Workflow for Virtual Machine Storage Policies
- Populating the VM Storage Policies Interface
- About Rules and Rule Sets
- Creating and Managing VM Storage Policies
- About Storage Policy Components
- Storage Policies and Virtual Machines
- Default Storage Policies
- Using Storage Providers
- Working with Virtual Volumes
- About Virtual Volumes
- Virtual Volumes Concepts
- Virtual Volumes and Storage Protocols
- Virtual Volumes Architecture
- Virtual Volumes and VMware Certificate Authority
- Snapshots and Virtual Volumes
- Before You Enable Virtual Volumes
- Configure Virtual Volumes
- Provision Virtual Machines on Virtual Volumes Datastores
- Virtual Volumes and Replication
- Best Practices for Working with vSphere Virtual Volumes
- Troubleshooting Virtual Volumes
- Filtering Virtual Machine I/O
- Storage Hardware Acceleration
- Hardware Acceleration Benefits
- Hardware Acceleration Requirements
- Hardware Acceleration Support Status
- Hardware Acceleration for Block Storage Devices
- Hardware Acceleration on NAS Devices
- Hardware Acceleration Considerations
- Thin Provisioning and Space Reclamation
- Using vmkfstools
- vmkfstools Command Syntax
- The vmkfstools Command Options
- -v Suboption
- File System Options
- Virtual Disk Options
- Supported Disk Formats
- Creating a Virtual Disk
- Initializing a Virtual Disk
- Inflating a Thin Virtual Disk
- Converting a Zeroedthick Virtual Disk to an Eagerzeroedthick Disk
- Removing Zeroed Blocks
- Deleting a Virtual Disk
- Renaming a Virtual Disk
- Cloning or Converting a Virtual Disk or RDM
- Extending a Virtual Disk
- Upgrading Virtual Disks
- Creating a Virtual Compatibility Mode Raw Device Mapping
- Creating a Physical Compatibility Mode Raw Device Mapping
- Listing Attributes of an RDM
- Displaying Virtual Disk Geometry
- Checking and Repairing Virtual Disks
- Checking Disk Chain for Consistency
- Storage Device Options
Internet SCSI Internet iSCSI (iSCSI) is a SAN transport that can use Ethernet
connections between computer systems, or ESXi hosts, and high-
performance storage systems. To connect to the storage systems, your
hosts use hardware iSCSI adapters or software iSCSI initiators with
standard network adapters.
See Chapter 10 Using ESXi with iSCSI SAN.
Storage Device or LUN In the ESXi context, the terms device and LUN are used interchangeably.
Typically, both terms mean a storage volume that is presented to the host
from a block storage system and is available for formatting.
See Target and Device Representations and Chapter 14 Managing Storage
Devices.
Virtual Disks A virtual machine on an ESXi host uses a virtual disk to store its operating
system, application files, and other data associated with its activities. Virtual
disks are large physical files, or sets of files, that can be copied, moved,
archived, and backed up as any other files. You can configure virtual
machines with multiple virtual disks.
To access virtual disks, a virtual machine uses virtual SCSI controllers.
These virtual controllers include BusLogic Parallel, LSI Logic Parallel, LSI
Logic SAS, and VMware Paravirtual. These controllers are the only types of
SCSI controllers that a virtual machine can see and access.
Each virtual disk resides on a datastore that is deployed on physical
storage. From the standpoint of the virtual machine, each virtual disk
appears as if it were a SCSI drive connected to a SCSI controller. Whether
the physical storage is accessed through storage or network adapters on
the host is typically transparent to the VM guest operating system and
applications.
VMware vSphere
®
VMFS
The datastores that you deploy on block storage devices use the native
vSphere Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) format. It is a special high-
performance file system format that is optimized for storing virtual
machines.
See Understanding VMFS Datastores.
NFS An NFS client built into ESXi uses the Network File System (NFS) protocol
over TCP/IP to access an NFS volume that is located on a NAS server. The
ESXi host can mount the volume and use it as an NFS datastore.
See Understanding Network File System Datastores.
Raw Device Mapping In addition to virtual disks, vSphere offers a mechanism called raw device
mapping (RDM). RDM is useful when a guest operating system inside a
virtual machine requires direct access to a storage device. For information
about RDMs, see Chapter 19 Raw Device Mapping.
vSphere Storage
VMware, Inc. 10