Hello All! Hope you are learning  something new everyday.  Remember! Together we learn, Together we rise!

This blog helps you with the steps required to create a VMFS Volume in vSphere ESXi environment.

Points to Cover: –

1. Creating a VMFS Volume.
2. Key  Features of VMFS 6 over VMFS 5.
3. Specifying the partition configuration for datastore.

In our lab we are connected to vCenter through webclient.

• Select the ESXi host in the left pane

Once you right click on the host on the left pane, it will open a dialogue box as shown below-

• Click “Storage” and choose “New Datastore”.

Now, that the “New datastore” wizard has come out on the screen. Select “VMFS” and click next as shown below.

We need to specify the name of the LUN/DISK before it can be used as it is shown in the below mentioned screenshot.

In our next screen, we need to choose the VMFS version for the datastore. Please choose based on your requirements of environment.

VMFS 6  was introduced in vSphere 6.5 with following key features over VMFS 5-

• VMFS 6 is not accessible to ESXi 6.0 and earlier.
• VMFS 6 supports automatic space reclamation- It gives functionality to storage arrays to reclaim deleted or unmapped disk blocks a datastore.
• VMFS 6 also supports space reclamation from Guest OS.
• It supports 4K native drivers in 512e (Emulation) mode which means legacy applications and guest operating systems are supported.

Upon choosing the VMFS version, the next screen asks you choose the size of the datastore and the partition configuration. By default, it would be GPT unless specified.

At the end, it would ask you verify the details provided in the previous screens. Ensure to verify and return back if any changes are needed.