VMware has released a paper titled:"VMFS File Locking and Its Impact in VMware View 5.1". The paper which contains 16 pages describes what VMware has done in order to extend the support to a maximum of 32 hosts in a ESX cluster when VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is used. Versions prior to View 5.1 only supported 8 hosts in an ESX Cluster when (VMFS) was used, when NFS storage is used for linked clone replica creation.
The paper answers the following questions, among others:
• What are the technical reasons for the eight-host limit?
• Why is View affected by this limit while other VMware products are not?
• Are there workarounds to overcome this limit?
• How does View 5.1 overcome this limit?
Thanks to Eric Sloof for providing the news.