What's VMFS?

The popularity of virtual machines has constantly been growing. More and more people come across such terms as VMware, VMFS, VMDK, and ESX Server. So let's put them under consideration to find out what those are all about.

Vmware is an American company that has become well-known due to its virtualization software and services. Their technological break-through was successful virtualization of the x86 architecture. VMware virtualization systems provide new possibilities and general flexibility for users. Now you can run several copies of both server or desktop operating systems on a single computer.

VMware provides desktop and server versions of the software. Desktop variant works on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Its server versions VMware ESX and VMware ESXi, also called software hypervisors, are bare-metal and run on server hardware without requiring an underlying operating system.

VMware ESX Server employs its dedicated file system called VMFS, which is used to format partitions on HDD. VMware ESX is used to host numerous virtual PCs, which are located on VMFS partitions in VDMK format.

VMFS Recovery™ restores data from healthy and corrupted virtual disk images created in all versions of VMware ESX Server in fully automated mode.