6.7

Option Description
Disk File Lists disk files on the datastore.
Shares Shares is a value that represents the relative metric for controlling disk bandwidth.
The values Low, Normal, High, and Custom are compared to the sum of all
shares of all virtual machines on the host.
Limit - IOPs Allows you to customize IOPs. This value is the upper limit of I/O operations per
second allocated to the virtual disk.
Virtual flash read cache Determines the block size and cache size reservation. See Configure Flash Read
Cache for a Virtual Machine for details.
Disk mode Disk mode determines how a virtual disk is affected by snapshots.
You have the following options:
n
Dependent: Dependent disks are included in snapshots.
n
Independent - Persistent: Disks in persistent mode behave like conventional
disks on your physical computer. All data written to a disk in persistent mode
are written permanently to disk.
n
Independent - Nonpersistent: Changes to disks in nonpersistent mode are
discarded when you turn off or reset the virtual machine. With nonpersistent
mode, you can restart the virtual machine with a virtual disk in the same state
every time. Changes to the disk are written to and read from a redo log file
that is deleted when you turn off or reset the virtual machine.
Virtual Device Node Displays the virtual device node.
Use Disk Shares to Prioritize Virtual Machines
You can change the disk resources for a virtual machine. 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.
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
VMware, Inc. 104