1.3. About Storage

Storage is closely related to virtualization because usually a desktop provider requires somewhere to create and store the virtual disks used for desktops. The storage requirements depend on the desktop provider type.

The Oracle VM VirtualBox and Microsoft Hyper-V desktop providers require storage. Oracle VDI supports local disks, network file system shares, iSCSI storage devices, and Zettabyte File System (ZFS) storage pools. The storage that can be used depends on the desktop provider type and operating system of the virtualization hosts.

VMware vCenter desktop providers also require storage but the storage is managed by the VMware infrastructure. However, Oracle VDI is able to query vCenter for the available storage, and can select the data store to use when creating virtual disks.

For all other desktop providers, storage is managed independently of Oracle VDI.

For the desktop providers that require storage, Oracle VDI is able to monitor the available free space and current workload. If multiple storage servers are configured, Oracle VDI uses this information to balance the load.