Use virtual machine storage policies, formerly called virtual machine storage profiles, to ensure that virtual machines are placed to storage that guarantees a specific level of capacity, performance, availability, redundancy, and so on.
When you define a storage policy, you specify storage requirements for applications that would run on virtual machines. After you apply this storage policy to a virtual machine, the virtual machine is placed to a specific datastore that can satisfy the storage requirements.
You manage storage placement by using storage policies.
- If you use storage policies in conjunction with storage providers, verify that an appropriate storage provider is registered.
- Apply storage capability tags to datastores. See Assign Tags to Datastores.
- Enable storage policies for a host or cluster. See Enable Virtual Machine Storage Policies.
- Create storage policies by defining requirements for applications running on a virtual machine. See Define a Storage Policy for a Virtual Machine.
- Associate a storage policy with the virtual machine files or virtual disks. See Apply a Storage Policy to a Virtual Machine.
- Verify that virtual machines and virtual disks use datastores that are compliant with the assigned storage policy. See Check Storage Compliance for a Virtual Machine.