Managing Third-Party Storage Arrays

VMware partners and customers can optimize performance of their storage arrays in conjunction with VMware vSphere using VMware PSA (pluggable storage architecture). The esxcli storage core namespace manages VMware PSA and the esxcli storage nmp namespace manages the VMware NMP plug-in.

The vSphere Storage documentation discusses PSA functionality in detail and explains how to use the vSphere Client or the vSphere Web Client to manage the PSA, the associated native multipathing plug-in (NMP) and third-party plug-ins.

This chapter uses the following acronyms.

Acronym	Meaning
PSA	Pluggable Storage Architecture.
NMP	Native Multipathing Plugin. Generic VMware multipathing module.
PSP	Path Selection Plugin. Handles path selection for a given device.
SATP	Storage Array Type Plugin. Handles path failover for a given storage array.

This chapter includes these topics:

■	Managing NMP with esxcli storage nmp

■	Path Claiming with esxcli storage core claiming

■	Managing Claim Rules