Storage Protocols

When designing a vSphere infrastructure, it is important to understand that there is a variety of industry standard Storage Pprotocols to choose from. VMware supports the use of the most common ones that include Fiber Channel (FC), Internet SCSI (iSCSI), Network File System (NFS), and Fiber Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE).

The Fiber Channel (FC) protocol is used to encapsulate SCSI frames and send them natively over FC cables:

Any device that requires accessing data on an FC array will need a hardware initiator device called the Host Bus Adapter (HBA). The endpoint at the storage array is called storage processor, storage controller, or service processor. HBAs and the storage controllers connect to an FC Switch:

The FC storage fabric management is performed at the Fabric Switches (FC Switch) by creating access zones or segments for the initiators accessing the storage array. Figure FC Infrastructure shows eight possible access paths to each of the array controllers. VMware...