When you provision a virtual machine on a datastore in vSphere, you must assign to the virtual machine a compatible VM storage policy. If you do not configure and explicitly assign the storage policy to the virtual machine, the system uses a default storage policy.

VMware-Provided Default Storage Policy
The generic default storage policy that ESXi provides applies to all datastores and does not include rules specific to any storage type.

In addition, ESXi offers the default storage policies for object-based datastores, vSAN or Virtual Volumes. These policies guarantee the optimum placement for the virtual machine objects within the object-based storage.

For information about the default storage policy for Virtual Volumes, see Virtual Volumes and VM Storage Policies.

VMFS and NFS datastores do not have specific default policies and can use the generic default policy or a custom policy you define for them.

User-Defined Default Storage Policies
You can create a VM storage policy that is compatible with vSAN or Virtual Volumes. You can then designate this policy as the default for vSAN and Virtual Volumes datastores. The user-defined default policy replaces the default storage policy that VMware provides.

Each vSAN and Virtual Volumes datastore can have only one default policy at a time. However, you can create a single storage policy with multiple placement rule sets, so that it matches multiple vSAN and Virtual Volumes datastores. You can designate this policy as the default policy for all datastores.

When the VM storage policy becomes the default policy for a datastore, you cannot delete the policy unless you disassociate it from the datastore.

Change the Default Storage Policy for a Datastore

For Virtual Volumes and vSAN datastores, VMware provides storage policies that are used as the default during the virtual machine provisioning. You can change the default storage policy for a selected Virtual Volumes or vSAN datastore.

Note: Do not designate a storage policy with replication rules as a default storage policy. Otherwise, the policy prevents you from selecting replication groups.

Prerequisites

Create a storage policy that is compatible with Virtual Volumes or vSAN. You can create a policy that matches both types of storage.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to the datastore.
  2. Click the Configure tab, and click General.
  3. In the Default Storage Policy pane, click Edit.
  4. From the list of available storage policies, select a policy to designate as the default and click OK.

Results

The selected storage policy becomes the default policy for the datastore. The system assigns this policy to any virtual machine objects that you provision on the datastore when no other policy is selected.