Whether certain vSphere functionality is supported might depend on the storage technology that you use.

The following table compares networked storage technologies that ESXi supports.

Table 1. Networked Storage that ESXi Supports
Technology Protocols Transfers Interface
Fibre Channel FC/SCSI Block access of data/LUN FC HBA
Fibre Channel over Ethernet FCoE/SCSI Block access of data/LUN
  • Converged Network Adapter (hardware FCoE)
  • NIC with FCoE support (software FCoE)
    Note: Starting from vSphere 7.0, VMware no longer supports software FCoE in production environments.
iSCSI IP/SCSI Block access of data/LUN
  • iSCSI HBA or iSCSI-enabled NIC (hardware iSCSI)
  • Network adapter (software iSCSI)
NAS IP/NFS File (no direct LUN access) Network adapter

The following table compares the vSphere features that different types of storage support.

Table 2. vSphere Features Supported by Storage
Storage Type Boot VM vMotion Datastore RDM VM Cluster VMware HA and DRS Storage APIs - Data Protection
Local Storage Yes No VMFS No Yes No Yes
Fibre Channel Yes Yes VMFS Yes Yes Yes Yes
iSCSI Yes Yes VMFS Yes Yes Yes Yes
NAS over NFS Yes Yes NFS 3 and NFS 4.1 No No Yes Yes
Note: Local storage supports a cluster of virtual machines on a single host (also known as a cluster in a box). A shared virtual disk is required. For more information about this configuration, see the vSphere Resource Management documentation.