You can use datastore clusters in the ESXi clusters that host VMware Integrated OpenStack compute workloads.

A datastore cluster is a collection of datastores with shared resources and a shared management interface. You can use vSphere Storage DRS to manage the resources in a datastore cluster. For information about creating and configuring datastore clusters, see Creating a Datastore Cluster in vSphere Resource Management.

If you want to use datastore clusters with VMware Integrated OpenStack, be aware of the following:

  • When you deploy OpenStack using the VMware Integrated OpenStack vApp, you cannot select a datastore cluster for the compute or block storage component to consume. To specify a datastore cluster for the compute or block storage component during deployment, deploy OpenStack using the API.
  • During deployment, if you specify a datastore cluster for the compute component to consume, you cannot use custom.yml to specify other datastore clusters for any compute node after deployment. If you do so, the compute nodes with datastore clusters specified during deployment will not function properly.
  • If you use custom.yml to add compute nodes with datastore clusters after deployment, note the following limitations:
    • Only one datastore cluster can be used for each vCenter Server instance.
    • If your environment has multiple vCenter Server instances, the name of the datastore cluster used by VMware Integrated OpenStack in each instance must be the same.
  • Swift nodes do not support datastore clusters.
  • You can boot only images backed by virtual machines. Sparse and preallocated images cannot be booted on datastore clusters.
  • You must enable Storage DRS on your datastore clusters and set the Cluster automation level to No Automation (Manual Mode). Automatic migrations are not supported.
  • Only the following provisioning operations use Storage DRS:
    • Booting from a Glance template image
    • Creating raw Cinder volumes
    • Creating a volume from another volume (full clones and linked clones)
    • Cloning snapshots in COW format (full clones and linked clones)