A Volume Group is the Nutanix storage component used to present block storage through iSCSI to external clients, including physical or otherwise non-virtualized servers. A Volume Group contains one or more virtual disks and can be attached directly to an AHV VM or exposed through iSCSI to qualified external initiators. External client access is controlled by defining the relevant initiator information and establishing the iSCSI connection to the Volume Group.
A storage container is a logical storage boundary used for VM data placement and for settings such as replication factor, compression, deduplication, and erasure coding. Although Volume Group data ultimately consumes capacity from a container, the container itself is not presented as an iSCSI block target.
A storage pool aggregates the physical storage resources contributed by cluster nodes. It operates below the storage-container and workload-consumption layers and is not directly assigned to an external server. A vDisk template is also not the external block-presentation object.
The examination distinction is between the underlying storage hierarchy and the consumer-facing block-storage object. Storage pools supply capacity, containers provide logical policy boundaries, and Volume Groups organize vDisks for direct or iSCSI-based attachment.
NHCF/NCA reference: Nutanix storage operations, Volume Groups, external clients, and iSCSI connectivity. Official references: Storage Components and Volume Group Details .
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