Datastores are logical containers, similar to file systems, that contain specific information of each storage device and provide a uniform model for storing virtual machine files. You can also use datastores to store ISO images, virtual machine templates, and floppy images.

Depending on the type of storage you use, datastores can be of the following types:

  • Virtual Machine File System (VMFS)
  • Network File System (NFS)

You can increase datastore capacity after you create a datastore but only if it is a VMFS datastore.