Chapter 8 Configuring ESX Storage

5Select a device to use for your datastore and click Next.

NOTE Select the device that does not have a datastore name displayed in the VMFS Label column. If a name is present, the device contains a copy of an existing VMFS datastore.

If the disk you are formatting is blank, the Current Disk Layout page automatically presents the entire disk space for storage configuration.

6If the disk is not blank, review the current disk layout in the top panel of the Current Disk Layout page and select a configuration option from the bottom panel.

Option	Description
Use all available partitions	Dedicates the entire disk or LUN to a single VMFS datastore. If you select
	this option, all file systems and data currently stored on this device is
	destroyed.
Use free space	Deploys a VMFS datastore in the remaining free space of the disk.

7Click Next.

8 In the Properties page, enter a datastore name and click Next.

9If needed, adjust the file system and capacity values.

By default, the entire free space on the storage device is available.

10Click Next.

11In the Ready to Complete page, review the datastore configuration information and click Finish.

A datastore on the SCSI-based storage device is created. If you use the vCenter Server system to manage your hosts, the newly created datastore is automatically added to all hosts.

Network Attached Storage

ESX supports using NAS through the NFS protocol. The NFS protocol enables communication between an NFS client and an NFS server.

The NFS client built into ESX lets you access the NFS server and use NFS volumes for storage. ESX supports only NFS Version 3 over TCP.

You use the vSphere Client to configure NFS volumes as datastores. Configured NFS datastores appear in the vSphere Client, and you can use them to store virtual disk files in the same way that you use VMFS-based datastores.

NOTE ESX does not support the delegate user functionality that enables access to NFS volumes using nonroot credentials.

Figure 8-4 depicts a virtual machine using the NFS volume to store its files. In this configuration, the host connects to the NFS server, which stores the virtual disk files, through a regular network adapter.

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ESX Configuration Guide

Figure 8-4. NFS Storage

Host

virtual machine

ethernet NIC

LAN

NFS

NAS appliance

The virtual disks that you create on NFS-based datastores use a disk format dictated by the NFS server, typically a thin format that requires on-demand space allocation. If the virtual machine runs out of space while writing to this disk, the vSphere Client notifies you that more space is needed. You have the following options:

nFree up additional space on the volume so that the virtual machine continues writing to the disk.

nTerminate the virtual machine session. Terminating the session shuts down the virtual machine.

CAUTION When your host accesses a virtual machine disk file on an NFS-based datastore, a .lck-XXX lock file is generated in the same directory where the disk file resides to prevent other hosts from accessing this virtual disk file. Do not remove the .lck-XXX lock file, because without it, the running virtual machine cannot access its virtual disk file.

NFS Datastores as Repositories for Commonly Used Files

In addition to storing virtual disks on NFS datastores, you can also use NFS as a central repository for ISO images, virtual machine templates, and so on.

To use NFS as a shared repository, you create a directory on the NFS server and then mount it as a datastore on all hosts. If you use the datastore for ISO images, you can connect the virtual machine's CD-ROM device to an ISO file on the datastore and install a guest operating system from the ISO file.

NOTE If the underlying NFS volume, on which the files are stored, is read-only, make sure that the volume is exported as a read-only share by the NFS server, or configure it as a read-only datastore on the ESX host. Otherwise, the host considers the datastore to be read-write and might not be able to open the files.

Create an NFS-Based Datastore

You can use the Add Storage wizard to mount an NFS volume and use it as if it were a VMFS datastore.

Prerequisites

Because NFS requires network connectivity to access data stored on remote servers, before configuring NFS, you must first configure VMkernel networking.

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