vSphere Virtual Machine Administration - VMware Documentation

vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
Select a Resource for a Virtual Machine Template
When you deploy a virtual machine template, select a host or cluster resource for the template. The template
must be registered with an ESXi host. The host handles all requests for the template and must be running
when you create a virtual machine from the template.
Procedure
1 Search or browse for the host or cluster and select it.
Any Compatibility problems appear at the bottom of the window.
2 Click Next.
Select a Datastore for the Virtual Machine Template
Each virtual machine or virtual machine template requires a folder or directory for its virtual disks and files.
When you create a virtual machine or template to deploy to the vCenter Server inventory, select a datastore
or datastore cluster for the virtual machine's configuration and other files and all of the virtual disks. Each
datastore can have a different size, speed, availability, and other properties.
The amount of free space in the datastore is always changing. Ensure that you leave sufficient space for
virtual machine creation and other virtual machine operations, such as growth of sparse files, snapshots,
and so on. To review space utilization for the datastore by file type, see the vSphere Monitoring and
Performance documentation.
Thin provisioning lets you create sparse files with blocks that are allocated upon first access, which allows
the datastore to be over-provisioned. The sparse files can continue growing and fill the datastore. If the
datastore runs out of disk space while the virtual machine is running, it can cause the virtual machine to
stop functioning.
Procedure
1 Select the format for the virtual machine's disks.
Option
Same format as source
Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed
Thick Provision Eager Zeroed
Thin Provision
Action
Use the same format as the source virtual machine.
Create a virtual disk in a default thick format. Space required for the
virtual disk is allocated during creation. Any data remaining on the
physical device is not erased during creation, but is zeroed out on demand
at a later time on first write from the virtual machine.
Create a thick disk that supports clustering features such as Fault
Tolerance. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated at creation time.
In contrast to the thick provision lazy zeroed format, the data remaining
on the physical device is zeroed out during creation. It might take longer
to create disks in this format than to create other types of disks.
Use the thin provisioned format. At first, a thin provisioned disk uses only
as much datastore space as the disk initially needs. If the thin disk needs
more space later, it can grow to the maximum capacity allocated to it.
2 (Optional) Select a storage policy from the VM Storage Policy drop-down menu.
Storage policies specify storage requirements for applications that run on the virtual machine.
40 VMware, Inc.