VMware vSAN is a distributed layer of software that runs natively as a part of the ESXi hypervisor. vSAN aggregates local or direct-attached capacity devices of a host cluster and creates a single storage pool shared across all hosts in the vSAN cluster.

While supporting VMware features that require shared storage, such as HA, vMotion, and DRS, vSAN eliminates the need for external shared storage and simplifies storage configuration and virtual machine provisioning activities.