After Duncan Epping posted the “Home Lab Storage” article on Yellow-Bricks this week, I thought let’s give it a try. 
VMware Infrastructure 3 supports NAS storage devices using the NFS protocols. Iomega StorCenter NAS devices can present NFS-exported shares to VMware ESX Server to create Datastores for virtual machines and virtual disks. An Iomega StorCenter NAS offers greater reliability, ease of use, and ease of management characteristics that are designed specifically for the needs of small businesses.
NFS is a compelling option for VMware ESX for many reasons. With NFS, VMWare ESX Server supports advanced features including VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), high availability (VMHA), and VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). NFS offers a highly simplified management model that reduces cost and management complexity. VMware encapsulates virtual machines into a small number of .vmdk files. NFS is an optimized file-serving protocol with operational granularity at the file level as opposed to the LUN level. Iomega StorCenter NAS satisfies requirements for storage on VMware ESX Server and is certified in the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) with certifications in the NAS category. A StorCenter NAS device is a proven storage platform for small businesses that want to deploy VMware ESX Server.
Iomega has released a white paper last month explaining how to configure the ix2 and your ESX server. Both my ESX servers are connected to the real shared storage now :-) Next week I’ll post a "performance finding" article.
