VMFS - Wikipedia: "VMFS is VMware's SAN file system. (Other examples of SAN file systems are Global File System, Oracle Cluster File System). VMFS is used solely in the VMware flagship server product, the ESX. It was developed and is used to store virtual machine disk images, including snapshots.
- Multiple servers can read/write the same filesystem simultaneously, while
- Individual virtual machine files are locked
- VMFS volumes can be logically 'grown' (nondestructively increased in size) by spanning multiple VMFS volumes together.
There are three versions of VMFS: VMFS1, VMFS2 and VMFS3.
* VMFS1 was used by the ESX 1.x which is not sold anymore. It didn't feature the cluster filesystem properties and was used only by a single server at a time. VMFS1 is a flatfilesystem with no directory structure.
* VMFS2 is used by ESX 2.x, 2.5.x and ESX 3.x. While ESX 3.x can read from VMFS2, it will not mount it for writing. VMFS2 is a flatfilesystem with no directory structure.
* VMFS3 is used by ESX 3.x. As a most noticeable feature, it introduced directory structure in the filesystem. Older versions of ESX can't read or write on VMFS3 volumes. Beginning from ESX 3 and VMFS3, also virtual machine configuration files are stored in the VMFS partition by default."
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