vSphere Storage - ESXi 5.1 - Documentation - VMware

vSphere Storage
4 Use the icons to create a datastore or to perform basic tasks for a selected datastore.
Icon Description
Create a datastore.
Increase datastore capacity.
Mount a datastore to certain hosts.
Remove a datastore.
Unmount a datastore from certain hosts.
5 Use tabs to access additional information and modify datastore properties.
Tab Description
Getting Started View introductory information and access basic actions.
Summary View statistics and configuration for the selected datastore.
Monitor View alarms, performance data, resource allocation, events, and other status information for the
datastore.
Manage View and modify datastore properties, alarm definitions, tags, and permissions. Use this tab to
access storage devices that back the datastore, and to view and edit multipathing details for the
datastore devices.
Related Objects View objects related to the datastore. The objects include virtual machines that reside on the
datastore and hosts where the datastore is mounted.
How Virtual Machines Access Storage
When a virtual machine communicates with its virtual disk stored on a datastore, it issues SCSI commands.
Because datastores can exist on various types of physical storage, these commands are encapsulated into other
forms, depending on the protocol that the ESXi host uses to connect to a storage device.
ESXi supports Fibre Channel (FC), Internet SCSI (iSCSI), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and NFS
protocols. Regardless of the type of storage device your host uses, the virtual disk always appears to the virtual
machine as a mounted SCSI device. The virtual disk hides a physical storage layer from the virtual machine’s
operating system. This allows you to run operating systems that are not certified for specific storage equipment,
such as SAN, inside the virtual machine.
The following graphic depicts five virtual machines using different types of storage to illustrate the differences
between each type.
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