VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture

Virtual disk location

In most cases, storing virtual machine disks together on shared storage, rather than on local storage, is recommended. Many of the benefits of vSphere, such as virtual machine migration and availability, depend on shared storage.

In rare cases, local storage might also be required. For example, local storage might be less expensive and may be used by smaller organizations to run parts of their workload. In addition, vSAN uses local storage (SSD and HDDs) to create its datastore.