You can use the vSphere Web Client or vCLI commands to access different types of storage devices that your ESXi host discovers and to deploy datastores on those devices.
Datastores are logical containers, analogous to file systems, that hide specifics of each storage device and provide a uniform model for storing virtual machine files. Datastores can be used for storing ISO images, virtual machine templates, and floppy images. The vSphere Web Client uses the term datastore exclusively. In vCLI, the term datastore, as well as VMFS or NFS volume, refer to the same logical container on the physical device.
Depending on the type of storage you use, datastores can be backed by the VMFS and NFS file system formats.