VMware uses a file system called VMFS. VMFS is a scalable and high performance symmetric clustered file system for hosting virtual machines (VMs) on shared block storage. A lot of people know that. But, do you know the inner-workings of VMFS and how this impacts design choices for VMware environments? Well, if you want to know, check out the whitepaper written by Satyam V. Vahgani. In his whitepaper, Satyam describes everything you ever wanted to know about VMFS.
The paper presents VMFS architecture and its applicability to a virtual machine workload and a SAN-based block storage system, the motivation and design goals of this file system, core file system features and algorithms, and the influence of SAN storage systems on VMFS and vice versa.
So, if you are ready for a deep dive on VMFS, get the whitepaper here…