VMware VMFS

VMFS
Developer(s) VMware, Inc.
Full name Virtual Machine File System
Introduced with ESX Server v1.x
Partition identifier 0xfb (MBR)
Limits
Max. volume size 64 TB (VMFS5) [1]
Max. file size 62 TB [2][3]
Max. number of files ~130,690 (VMFS5) [2]
Features
Transparent compression No
Transparent encryption No
Data deduplication No
Other
Supported operating systems VMware ESX

VMware VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) is VMware, Inc.'s clustered file system used by the company's flagship server virtualization suite, vSphere. It was developed 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" (non-destructively increased in size) by spanning multiple VMFS volumes together. It is not mandatory to use VMFS with VMware; an alternative is NFS.

Version history

There are four versions of VMFS, corresponding with ESX/ESXi Server product releases.

Features

Limitations

Open Source Implementations

fluidOps Command Line Tool

A Java open source VMFS driver[8] enables read-only access to files and folders on partitions formatted with the Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is developed and maintained by fluid Operations AG. It allows features like offloaded backups of virtual machines hosted on VMware ESXi hosts up to VMFSv3.

glandium VFS FUSE Mount

Based on fluidOps code, vmfs-tools evolved to add more VMFS features and supports read only VMFS mounts through the standard Linux VFS and the FUSE framework. Developed by Christophe Fillot and Mike Hommey and available as source code download at the glandium.org vmfs-tools page or the Debian vmfs-tools and Ubuntu vmfs-tools packages.

References

  1. 1 2 "vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 1 - VMFS5". VMware. 2011-07-12. Retrieved 2012-01-05.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Configuration Maximums: VMware vSphere 5.5" (PDF). VMware. 2014-03-14. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  3. "What's New in vSphere 5.5 Storage" (PDF). VMware. 2013-08-27. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  4. 1 2 3 "Configuration Maximums" (PDF). VMware® vSphere 5.0.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Configuration Maximums for VMware vSphere 4.1" (PDF). VMware. 2010-07-13. Retrieved 2010-07-13.
  6. "VMFS3 Limitation". VMware.
  7. "vSphere 5.1 New Storage Features". VMware.
  8. Java open source VMFS driver

External links

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