6.0.1

Storage Policies and Virtual Machines
After you dene a VM storage policy, you can apply it to a virtual machine. You apply the storage policy
when provisioning the virtual machine or conguring its virtual disks. Depending on its type and
conguration, the policy might serve dierent purposes. It can select the most appropriate datastore for the
virtual machine and enforce the required level of service, or it can enable specic data services for the
virtual machine and its disks.
If you do not specify the storage policy, the system uses a default storage policy that is associated with the
datastore. If your storage requirements for the applications on the virtual machine change, you can modify
the storage policy that was originally applied to the virtual machine.
Default Storage Policies
When you provision a virtual machine on an object-based datastore, such as Virtual SAN or Virtual
Volumes, you must assign to the virtual machine an appropriate virtual machine storage policy that is
compatible with the datastore. This assignment guarantees the optimum placement for virtual machine
objects within the object-based storage. If you do not explicitly assign a storage policy to the virtual
machine, the system uses a default storage policy that is associated with the datastore. The default policy is
also used when the policy that you assign does not include rules specic to Virtual Volumes or Virtual SAN.
The default storage policies for Virtual SAN and Virtual Volumes can be provided by VMware and user-
dened. VMFS and NFS datastores do not have default policies.
Default Policies Provided by VMware
VMware provides default storage policies for Virtual SAN and virtual datastores.
Virtual SAN Default Storage Policy
The default storage policy that VMware provides is applied to all virtual machine objects that are
provisioned on a Virtual SAN datastore when you do not select any other Virtual SAN policy.
The policy that VMware provides has the following characteristics:
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You cannot delete the policy.
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The policy is editable. To edit the policy, you must have the storage policy privileges that include the
view and update privileges.
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When editing the policy, you cannot change the name of the policy or the Virtual SAN storage provider
specication. All other parameters including rules are editable.
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You can clone the default policy and use it as a template to create a storage policy.
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The Virtual SAN default policy is compatible only with Virtual SAN datastores.
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You can create a VM storage policy for Virtual SAN and designate it as the default.
Virtual Volumes Default Storage Policy
For Virtual Volumes, VMware provides a default storage policy that contains no rules or storage
requirements. As with Virtual SAN, this policy is applied to virtual machine objects when you do not
specify another policy for the virtual machine that you place on the virtual datastore. With the No
Requirements policy, storage arrays can determine the optimum placement for the VM objects.
The default Virtual Volumes policy that VMware provides has the following characteristics:
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You cannot delete, edit, or clone this policy.
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The Virtual Volumes default policy is compatible only with virtual datastores.
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You can create a VM storage policy for Virtual Volumes and designate it as the default.
vSphere Storage
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