Datastores

ESXi hosts use storage space on a variety of physical storage systems, including internal and external devices and networked storage.

A host can discover storage devices to which it has access and format them as datastores. Each datastore is a special logical container, analogous to a file system on a logical volume, where the host places virtual disk files and other virtual machine files. Datastores hide specifics of each storage product and provide a uniform model for storing virtual machine files.

Depending on the type of storage you use, datastores can be backed by the following file system formats.

• Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) - High-performance file system optimized for storing virtual machines. Your host can deploy a VMFS datastore on any SCSI-based local or networked storage device, including Fibre Channel and iSCSI SAN equipment.
• Network File System (NFS) - File system on a NAS storage device. ESXi supports NFS version 3 and 4.1. The host can access a designated NFS volume located on an NFS server, mount the volume, and use it for any storage needs.