If multiple virtual machines access the same VMFS datastore and the same logical unit number (LUN), use disk shares to prioritize the disk accesses from the virtual machines. Disk shares distinguish high-priority from low-priority virtual machines.

You can allocate the host disk's I/O bandwidth to the virtual hard disks of a virtual machine. Disk I/O is a host-centric resource so you cannot pool it across a cluster.

Shares is a value that represents the relative metric for controlling disk bandwidth to all virtual machines. The values are compared to the sum of all shares of all virtual machines on the server.

Disk shares are relevant only within a given host. The shares assigned to virtual machines on one host have no effect on virtual machines on other hosts.

You can select an IOP limit, which sets an upper bound for storage resources that are allocated to a virtual machine. IOPs are the number of I/O operations per second.

Procedure

  1. Right-click a virtual machine in the inventory and select Edit Settings.
  2. On the Virtual Hardware tab, expand Hard disk to view the disk options.
  3. From the Shares drop-down menu, select a value for the shares to allocate to the virtual machine. Alternatively, you can select Custom and you can enter a number of shares in the text box manually.
  4. In the Limit - IOPs box, enter the upper limit of storage resources to allocate to the virtual machine, or select Unlimited.
  5. Click OK.