The full system requirements can be found here. The minimum disk requirement is 10GB so make sure to modify the hard disk size before you start the Openfiler installation. The OS type to choose is Other Linux 64 bit. To get started you need to create a virtual machine (in ESXi or Workstation), attach the ISO-file and power on. Therefor I have based the article on installation of the ISO-file you can download it at I have used version 2.99 (openfileresa-2.99.1-x86_64-disc1.iso) There is also an appliance available that you can download but the appliance is not always updated to the latest version and I had mixed results in the past with importing it into different environment. In this article I will explain how to setup Openfiler.

Openfiler is a good choice to setup a storage appliance to provide shared storage with NFS or iSCSI. When you have created an ESXi environment and want to work with features such as vMotion and High Availability you will need shared storage in your environment.