With the launch of vSphere 4, VMware introduces a new version of the hypervisor, ESX 4.0 and the management interface, vCenter. Some key benefits offered by this release are greater resource efficiency, management control and freedom of choice for virtual datacenter storage resources and connectivity options. VMware has added many new storage management capabilities that increase disk utilization rate, provide greater control of these storage resources and enable increased options for datastore protocol support and format of virtual disk format. These storage features provide new levels of flexibility and improved management agility for virtualization environments that run vSphere.

This document provides information about the storage enhancements in vSphere that provide efficiency, control, and choice. Read this paper for more information.