Question : Vmware and VMFS question - please advise!

I am planning to build a small test lab at our office running VSphere 4.  I have a couple of questions.

From what I've been reading, I need a SCSI implimentation in order to run VMFS based features (ie HA, DRS, Vmotion, etc).  So, does this mean I only need to run the VM's from an 'SCSI" storage device?  My plan is this:

Running 2 physical machines to install ESX (using SATA HD's)
Running 1 box installing FreeNAS using SATA drives but setting up the iSCSI features.

Does VMFS need to be installed on the hosts or can I install the host OS like normal on SATA drives on the 2 phsical boxes, then setup FreeNAS on another workstation running RAID 5 with SATA drives, setting up iSCSI and then attaching it to the ESX hosts (using VMFS on the FreeNAS box).  I'm hoping this will allow me to play with the VMFS features.

Answer : Vmware and VMFS question - please advise!

VMFS is a filesystem type, i.e. FAT32, NTFS, etc... Your vmdk's will be in volumes/luns/das that are formatted in VMFS...

There are several ways to go about setting up storage, and there are even virtual appliances such as Lefthands VAS that can make direct-attached storage iSCSI enabled and actually allow for vMotion with vm's residing on local storage.

You just need to setup your ESX hosts, configure vCenter to join them to a cluster and then configure your NAS or iSCSI on each hosts making it visible to each. From that point, you can format the storage with vmfs and start creating your VMs.

always a good reference (vmware docs ;)

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsp40u1_i/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm#href=welcome/welcome.html