Disk Storage options

Disk Storage options

The esxi_disk_store option is optional. If it's not specified or you do not specify a disk store correctly, the default is to use the least used ESXi Disk Store. The plugin doesn't create disk stores, they must already exists. Supported Disk Stores are VMFS and NFS.

An example if you had a disk store called 'DS_001'.

    esxi.esxi_disk_store = 'DS_001'

You can optionally specify a disk type used when creating the vmware guest virtual disk. If unspecified, the default is 'thin', Otherwise, you can set to 'thin', 'thick', or 'eagerzeroedthick'.

guest_disk_type = 'thin' will create the guest virtual disk using "thin provisioning". This will not allocate space on your Disk Stores unless it's actually used. For example. If the guest was configured to use a 40GB root filesystem, but only used 5GB. The thin disk will use only 5GB of Disk Store, but could potentially grow to 40GB. This method is slowest to grow because it needs to grow the virtual disk, then 'zero out' the space.

guest_disk_type = 'thick' will create the guest virtual disk using 'thick provisioning'. This will allocate the entire allocated space on your Disk Store even if it hasn't been used yet. If the guest was configured to use 40GB storage, it will allocate 40GB storage. This method is fast to create, but the sectors get 'zero'd out' on first use.

guest_disk_type = 'eagerzeroedthick' will create the guest virtual disk using 'eagerzeroedthick provisioning'. This is essentially the same as thick, except the sectors are 'zero'd out' when it's created. It's slow to create, but it's the highest performance because it's pre-allocated and new sectors doesn't need to be zero'd out.

    esxi.guest_disk_type = 'thick'

If needed, the boot disk can be extended by specifying the "guest_boot_disk_size" option. If unspecified, the boot disk size will be the same as the original box. You can specify a larger boot disk size in GB.
Note that the extra disk space will NOT automatically be available to your OS. You will need to create or modify partitions, LVM and/or filesystems. The following option will extend the boot disk to 50GB, if it's currently smaller than 50GB.

    esxi.guest_boot_disk_size = 50

You can also create additional virtual disk storage for your Guests. You can specify an array of up to 13 virtual disk sizes (in GB) that you would like the provider to create once the guest has been created. They will be created using the same disk type as specified by esxi.guest_disk_type. The virtual disks will be created and added to the guest, however you must provision it. The disks can be used for lvm, partitioned, raw disk for data bases, etc... The following example will add two additional virtual disks to your Guest. The first (/dev/sdb) is 10GB, the second (/dev/sdc) is 20GB.

    esxi.guest_storage = [10,20]