The significant presence of network-attached storage (NAS) in the datacenter today has enabled many people to deploy virtualization environments with NAS-based shared storage resources. For clarity, both Network File Systems (NFS) and NAS refer to the same type of storage protocol and are used interchangeably throughout this paper. The capabilities of VMware vSphere on NFS are very similar to those of vSphere on block-based storage. VMware offers support for all vSphere features and functions on NFS, as it does for vSphere on block storage. Running vSphere on NFS is a viable option for many virtualization deployments, because it offers strong performance and stability when configured correctly. This paper provides an overview of the considerations and best practices for deployment of vSphere on NFS-based storage.
Best Practices for Running VMware vSphere on Network-Attached Storage (NAS)