vSphere and vSAN use storage policies to define specific storage placement rules and data service configuration rules. During virtual machine deployment, rather than individual rules, a predefined storage policy is selected, which simplifies deployment and ensures that suitable storage placement and data services are used.
Typically, when benchmarking a storage platform, a storage placement or protection method of mirroring or RAID 1 is selected. In addition, data services such as encryption or data reduction are disabled. However, with vSAN ESA, VMware are promoting "Performance without Compromise" and recommending the use of parity data protection methods (RAID 5 or RAID 6) and have included compression in the default storage policy.
![This graphic illustrates creating vSAN storage policy](/static/media/9198938f-8c47-5a0e-82d9-6db6a62cd3f7/DAM-f052fe04-0d1a-4d63-94c1-2b201c46b149/out/Picture1=GUID-F69FFFAB-3A2E-490E-B160-4102968179FA=1=en-us=Low.png)