6.5.1

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 Action
Same format as source Use the same format as the source virtual machine.
Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed 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.
Thick Provision Eager Zeroed 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.
Thin Provision 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.
3 Select a datastore location for the virtual disk.
Option Action
Store the virtual disk and virtual
machine configuration files in the
same location on a datastore.
Select Store with the virtual machine from the Location drop-down menu.
Store the disk in a separate datastore
location.
Select Browse from the Location drop-down menu, and select a datastore for
the disk.
Store all virtual machine files in the
same datastore cluster.
a Select Browse from the Location drop-down menu and select a datastore
cluster for the disk.
b (Optional) If you do not want to use Storage DRS with this virtual machine,
select Disable Storage DRS for this virtual machine and select a datastore
within the datastore cluster.
4 Click Next.
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
VMware, Inc. 29