Storage is usually the most critical part of a virtual infrastructure, due to the need for enough performance and capacity for the entire cluster and all the workloads inside it. In order to provide features such as vSphere high availability (HA), vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), and other cluster-related capabilities, you need common shared storage for all the ESXi hosts of the cluster. You can also have more storage per cluster, or use the same storage for more clusters.
Practicing what you learn during this chapter is a key point for enforcing your skills and preparation for the exam. Different labs can help you, such as the HOL-1808-01-HCI (vSAN v6.6.1 - Getting started) for vSAN, and HOL-1827-01-HCI (VMware Storage - Virtual Volumes and Storage Policy-Based Management) for vVols and SPBM.
In this chapter, you will...