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Hi,<br />
2TB file (VMDK) size limit is a VMFS3 limitation.<br />
So now you have VMFS5 on last vsphere 5.5 and 6, so you could have a 62TB size limit.. not the same! ;-)<br />
But be carefull, AFAIK you need to recreate completly your datastores, and migrate your VM from old datastores to the brand new ones. If you do an upgrade from VMFS v3 to v5 on existing datastores, it is quick and easy, but your file size limit won't change.<br />
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<a href="https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2058287" rel="ugc nofollow">https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2058287</a>
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Thanks for your reply. &nbsp;Yes, we will be recreating the datastores. &nbsp;What I'm asking is should we do vmdk files or are there alternatives, such as direct attaching LUNs to the VM?
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If you are creating File Server's with Windows 2012, we would recommend you move to the ReFS file system and not NTFS, it has many new benefits.<br />
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as for your size, that's entirely up to you, whether 2TB fits for your file shares.
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We have a Win 2008 R2 file server VM with 4, 2 TB vmdk files to hold user data. &nbsp;We have a fiber connected SAN that presents the LUNs to the ESXi hosts. &nbsp;<br />
<br />
We are upgrading from VMware 5.1 to 6, moving from one data centre to another, and are planning on deploying a new Win 2012 R2 file server VM. &nbsp;We will also be recreating the volumes for the user data.<br />
<br />
What is the best practice to attach disks to the VM? &nbsp;Should we continue to simply create 2 TB vmdk files or is there a better way?<br />
<br />
Thanks,
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We have a Win 2008 R2 file server VM with 4, 2 TB vmdk files to hold user data.  We have a fiber connected SAN that presents the LUNs to the ESXi hosts.  

We are upgrading from VMware 5.1 to 6, moving from one data centre to another, and are planning on deploying a new Win 2012 R2 file server VM.  We will also be recreating the volumes for the user data.

What is the best practice to attach disks to the VM?  Should we continue to simply create 2 TB vmdk files or is there a better way?

Thanks,

VM File Server - Best practice to attach disks

VMware, a software company founded in 1998,  was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies.

VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture.  Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.

VMware

Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media used to retain digital data. In addition to local storage devices like CD and DVD readers, hard drives and flash drives, solid state drives can hold enormous amounts of data in a very small device. Cloud services and other new forms of remote storage also add to the capacity of devices and their ability to access more data without building additional data storage into a device.