Assign Storage Policies to Virtual Machines

You can assign a VM storage policy in an initial deployment of a virtual machine or when you perform other virtual machine operations, such as cloning or migrating.

This topic describes how to assign the VM storage policy when you create a virtual machine. For information about other deployment methods that include cloning, deployment from a template, and so on, see the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration documentation.

You can apply the same storage policy to the virtual machine configuration file and all its virtual disks. If storage requirements for your virtual disks and the configuration file are different, you can associate different storage policies with the VM configuration file and the selected virtual disks.

Procedure

1. In the vSphere Web Client, start the virtual machine provisioning process and follow the appropriate steps.
2. Assign the same storage policy to all virtual machine files and disks.
   1. On the Select storage page, select a storage policy from the VM Storage Policy drop-down menu.
      Based on its configuration, the storage policy separates all datastores into compatible and incompatible sets. If the policy references data services offered by a specific storage entity, for example, Virtual Volumes, the compatible list includes datastores that represent only that type of storage.
   2. Select an appropriate datastore from the list of compatible datastores.
      The datastore becomes the destination storage resource for the virtual machine configuration file and all virtual disks.
3. Change the VM storage policy for the virtual disk.
   Use this option if requirements for storage placement are different for virtual disks. You can also use this option to enable I/O filter services, such as caching and replication, for your virtual disks.
   1. On the Customize hardware page, expand the New hard disk pane.
   2. From the VM storage policy drop-down menu, select the storage policy to assign to the virtual disk.
   3. (Optional) Change the storage location of the virtual disk.
      Use this option to store the virtual disk on a datastore other than the datastore where the VM configuration file resides.
4. Complete the virtual machine provisioning process.

Results

After you create the virtual machine, the Summary tab displays the assigned storage policies and their compliance status.

What to do next

If storage placement requirements for the configuration file or the virtual disks change, you can later modify the virtual policy assignment.