What software-defined storage solution provides shared storage for vSphere clusters without relying on traditional external storage?

The software-defined storage solution that provides shared storage for vSphere clusters without relying on traditional external storage is vSAN. vSAN is integrated directly into the VMware hypervisor, allowing storage resources to be pooled from the local disks of the ESXi hosts within a vSphere cluster. This means that vSAN utilizes the internal storage of the hosts, which helps eliminate the need for traditional dedicated storage hardware such as SAN or NAS devices.

This approach offers greater scalability, flexibility, and ease of management compared to conventional storage architectures. vSAN is designed to take advantage of the VMware environment seamlessly, optimizing performance and storage efficiency. As workloads change, vSAN can dynamically adjust to meet the demands of the applications running within the cluster, making it a robust solution for virtualized environments.

In contrast, options such as NFS, vVOLs, and iSCSI typically rely on external storage systems. Each of these can integrate with VMware for storage solutions, but they do not represent the same level of integration and independence from traditional storage hardware that vSAN offers.