From VMWare’s Fibre Channel SAN Guide found here
and VMWare’s iSCSI SAN Configuration found here
SAN ( Storage Area Network) –
NAS (Network Attached Storage) –
iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) –
WWPN (World Wide Port Name) – is a globally unique identifier for a port that allows certain applications to access the port. The FC switches discover the WWPN of a device or host and assign a port address to the device.
NPIV (N-Port ID Virtualization) – is used, a single FC HBA port (N-port) can register with the fabric by using several WWPNs. This method allows an N-port to claim multiple fabric addresses, each of which appears as a unique entity
Raw device mapping (RDM) – is a special file in a VMFS volume that acts as a proxy for a raw device, such as a SAN LUN. With the RDM, the SAN LUN can be directly and entirely allocated to a virtual machine. The RDM provides some of the advantages of a virtual disk in the VMFS file system, while keeping some advantages of direct access to physical devices.
An RDM might be required if you use Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) or if you run SAN snapshot or other layered applications on the virtual machine. RDMs enable systems to use the hardware features inherent to SAN arrays. However, virtual machines with RDMs do not display performance gains compared to virtual machines with virtual disk files stored on a VMFS datastore.
Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) – is an open modular framework that enables third-party storage multipathing solutions for workload balancing and high availability. You can use the vSphere CLI or vCenter Server to manage paths controlled by the default Native Multipathing. If array-specific functionality is required, a third-party plug-in using the vStorage API for Multipathing can be configured using the vSphere CLI.
VMware Native Multipathing Plugin (NMP) – The NMP is an extensible module that manages subplugins. SATPs and PSPs can be built-in and provided by VMware, or can be provided by a third party. There are two types of NMP subplugins:
1) Storage Array Type Plugins (SATPs) – run in conjunction with the VMware NMP and are responsible for array specific operations. ESX/ESXi offers an SATP for every type of array that VMware supports. These SATPs include an active/active SATP and active/passive SATP for non-specified storage arrays, and the local SATP for direct-attached storage.
2) Path Selection Plugins (PSPs) – run in conjunction with the VMware NMP and are responsible for choosing a physical path for I/O requests. The VMware NMP assigns a default PSP for every logical device based on the SATP associated with the physical paths for that device. You can override the default PSP.
vCrypt 