VMware ESXi enables multiple hosts to share the same physical storage through its optimized storage stack and VMware VMFS-distributed filesystem. Centralized storage of VMs can be accomplished using VMFS and/or NFS. Centralized storage enables virtualization capabilities, such as VMware vMotion, VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), and VMware High Availability.

Several factors have an effect on storage performance:

• Storage protocols
• Proper configuration of your host device and storage devices
• Load balancing across available storage processors
• Storage queues