New in Vsphere 5.0 Storage : Part 1

                    vSphere 5.0 introduces a new version of vSphere VMFS i.e. VMFS -5 to provide great scalability & performance with much simpler management.

The first step is to reduce the storage objects to manage i.e. fewer and much larger datastores. Fewer and much larger datastores is  being achieved by implementing UNIFIED BLOCK SIZE, which is 1 MB this removes the limitation of maximum size for a datastore limited like earlier versions.

Enhancements in VMFS-5

Large files can be created on VMFS – 5 using 1 MB file blocks

In VMFS-5 extent of size 60 TB can be added if Extent volume is with UNIFIED Block Size of 1 MB,  It was 2 TB earlier.

Smaller sub-block of 8 KB ( was 64KB earlier)is introduced in VMFS – 5. This reduces the disk space utilization for small files i.e. more than 1 KB but less than 8 KB.

In VMFS – 5 files less than or equal to 1 KB are stored in descriptor location in metadata instead of file blocks.

VMFS – 5 supports greater than 100000 filese it was 30000 in VMFS – 3

ATS ( Atomic Test & Set ) is now used  for file locking in VMFS – 5

Datastores can be upgraded from VMFS – 3 to VMFS – 5 without any downtime. Upgraded volumes to VMFS – 5 will retain their orignial block size as modifying block size requires reformat of the volume.