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This example is identical to the one above except that the repository located on the management node's local disk is not exported via NFS.  Because of this, image must be transferred using SCP instead of vmkfstools.  This is less desirable than mounting the repository directly on the VM hosts because images cannot be copied and converted in a single step.  Images are stored in the repository in the 2GB sparse format.  This allows the images to be copied via SCP while only transferring the data stored in the image, not the entire size of the hard drive stored in the image.  VMware ESXi cannot run VMs using vmdk images stored in the 2GB sparse format.  Images are converted to the vmfs thin format so that they can be loaded on VMware ESXi.  This adds extra time to the load process if an image does not exist in the VM's local datastore and must be copied from the repository.  It also requires additional space in the VM host's local datastore becuase 2 copies of the image exist while it is being converted.
Note that the VM host profile Repository Path parameter is set to the path on the management node's hard drive.  The code first checks if the path exists on the VM host.  If not, it assumes the repository is not mounted directly on the VM host and the Repository Path value refers to a location on the management node.

Network Storage Only - No Repository

Image Added

This is an example of a simple configuration where the network storage is used.

A repository is not used in this configuration.  This implies that all VM hosts which will ever be added to this VCL environment will need to be able to connect to the network storage.

A datastore named "datastore" is mounted on every VM host.  Each of these mounts points to the same location on the network storage.  The datastore will contain the master vmdk images.  VMs loaded on the VM hosts will read from these master vmdk images.

A datastore named "vmpath" is also mounted on each VM host.  However, the location each VM host points should be different.  In the example above, vmhost-a-01 points to th the /vmpath01 directory on the network storage and vmhost-a-02 points to the /vmpath02 directory.  These locations may be different network storage filesystems or may be different directories on the same network filesystem.  Even though the mounts on the VM hosts point to different locations, the datastore names configured under ESXi are identical.  This allows you to use the same VCL VM host profile for all of the VM hosts.

The VM host profile VM Disk parameter is set to networkdisk.  This indicates to the load process that the VM host's datastore path is shared by other VM hosts.