

You can store virtual machine data in a new virtual disk, an existing virtual disk, or a mapped SAN LUN. A virtual disk, which appears as a single hard disk to the guest operating system, is composed of one or more files on the host file system. You can easily copy or move virtual disks on the same hosts or between hosts.

For virtual machines running on an ESX/ESXi host, you can store the virtual machine data directly on a SAN LUN instead of storing it in a virtual disk file. This is useful if you are running applications in your virtual machines that must know the physical characteristics of the storage device. Additionally, mapping a SAN LUN allows you to use existing SAN commands to manage storage for the disk.

When you map a LUN to a VMFS volume, vCenter Server creates a raw device mapping (RDM) file that points to the raw LUN. Encapsulating disk information in a file allows vCenter Server to lock the LUN so that only one virtual machine can write to it. This file has a .vmdk extension, but the file contains only disk information that describes the mapping to the LUN on the ESX/ESXi system. The actual data is stored on the LUN. You cannot deploy a virtual machine from a template and store its data on a LUN. You can store only its data in a virtual disk file.