How big can VMFS datastore be?

VMware VMFS supports up to a maximum size of 64 TB. The FlashArray supports far larger than that, but for ESXi, volumes should not be made larger than 64 TB due to the filesystem limit of VMFS. Using a smaller number of large volumes is generally a better idea today.

How large can a VMDK be?

The maximum supported VMDK size is 62TB.

Is VMFS block storage?

Like we stated above, VMFS is a block level file system, while NFS is a file level file system. When creating a VMFS Datastore, the VMFS file system is created by the vSphere, while the NFS file system is on Storage side and is only mounted has a shared folder on the vSphere.

How many VMS are in a datastore?

VMware currently supports a maximum of 2,048 powered-on virtual machines per VMFS datastore. However, in most circumstances and environments, a target of 15–25 virtual machines per datastore is the conservative recommendation.

What is the maximum disk capacity of a VM?

Standard unmanaged virtual machine disks: Per-disk limits

VM tier Basic tier VM Standard tier VM
Disk size 4,095 GB 4,095 GB
Maximum 8-KB IOPS per persistent disk 300 500
Maximum number of disks that perform the maximum IOPS 66 40

What is VMFS datastore?

VMFS datastores are used as repositories for virtual machines’ files. They can be set up on any SCSI-based storage device that the ESXi host discovers, such as Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or local storage devices.

What is the maximum size of a data disk in terabytes?

This extends the maximum size of the disks from 1,024 GB to 4,095 GB and enables customers to add 4x more disk storage capacity per VM. Customers can now provision up to a total of 256 TB disks storage on a GS5 VM using 64 disks with 4 TB capacity.

What is VMFS volume?

VMFS is both a volume manager and a file system that is laid down on the aggregate of storage resources made available to either a single ESX host or a cluster of ESX hosts. When you define a new VMFS volume on a block device, VMFS calculates a volume signature and writes it in the header of the VMFS volume.

Where are VMFS files stored?

VMDK File Location. On ESX/ESXi hosts, virtual machine disk (VMDK) files are located under one of the /vmfs/volumes, perhaps on shared storage. Storage volumes are visible from the vSphere Client, in the inventory for hosts and clusters. Typical names are datastore1 and datastore2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_QqvuBfG70