Workflow for Virtual Machine Storage Policies

The entire process of creating and managing storage policies typically includes several steps.

Whether you must perform a specific step might depend on the type of storage or data services that your environment offers.

Step	Description
Populate the VM Storage Policies interface with appropriate data.	The VM Storage Policies interface is populated with information about datastores and data services that are available in your storage environment. This information is obtained from storage providers and datastore tags. For entities represented by storage providers, verify that an appropriate provider is registered. Entities that use the storage provider include vSAN, Virtual Volumes, and I/O filters. Depending on the type of storage entity, some providers are self-registered. Other providers must be manually registered. See Use Storage Providers to Populate the VM Storage Policies Interface and Register Storage Providers for Virtual Volumes. Tag datastores that are not represented by storage providers. You can also use tags to indicate a property that is not communicated through the storage provider, such as geographical location or administrative group. See Assign Tags to Datastores.
Create predefined storage policy components.	A storage policy component describes a single data service, such as replication, that must be provided for the virtual machine. You can define the component in advance and associate it with multiple VM storage policies. The components are reusable and interchangeable. See Create Storage Policy Components.
Create VM storage policies.	When you define storage policies for virtual machines, you specify storage requirements for applications that run on the virtual machines. See Creating and Managing VM Storage Policies.
Apply the VM storage policy to the virtual machine.	You can apply the storage policy when deploying the virtual machine or configuring its virtual disks. See Assign Storage Policies to Virtual Machines.
Check compliance for the VM storage policy.	Verify that the virtual machine uses the datastore that is compliant with the assigned storage policy. See Check Compliance for a VM Storage Policy.

To create and manage your storage policies, you use the VM Storage Policy interface of the vSphere Client.