VMware Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2. Storage

Storage will be one of the key components in your virtualized environment. In this chapter, we will look at the different types of storage and ways to successfully configure and use them within the ESXi environment.

2.1. Comparing ESXi Storage Options

Problem

You want to know which network storage types ESXi supports and what each type offers.

Solution

Review the comparison tables in this recipe.

Discussion

Table 2-1 lays out the types of storage ESXi supports. Table 2-2 lists the features of different storage types that can be utilized in ESXi. It’s important to understand the technologies and their capabilities and limitations when setting up your ESXi environment.

You will achieve higher success and performance within your environment when using VMware with a SAN, regardless of which type of SAN you use.

Let’s take a look at each technology and the benefits of each.

Fibre Channel

Fibre Channel has been around for years and gives you 2, 4, or 8Gbps of throughput from your ESXi servers to the SAN. People who are using Fibre Channel tend to have dedicated storage administrators and larger environments that require its robust feature set. Fibre Channel, however, can be more difficult to set up because of the switch zoning that needs to take place. However, zoning is a requirement if the SAN is directly connected to the servers.

Local storage

Local storage implies exactly that. It’s a local disk or disks inside a server or JBOD that are either in a single or RAID configuration. ...