The following table compares networked storage technologies that vSphere 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 |
|
|
iSCSI |
IP/SCSI |
Block access of data/LUN |
|
|
NAS |
IP/NFS |
File (no direct LUN access) |
Network adapter |
The following table compares the vSphere features that different types of storage support.
|
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 |
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.
