Datastores are logical containers used by the HX Data Platform to manage your storage usage and storage resources. Datastores are where the host places virtual disk files and other VM files. Datastores hide the specifics of physical storage devices and provide a uniform model for storing VM files.

You can add, refresh the list, edit name and size, delete, mount, and unmount datastores from either the HX Connect UI or the HX Data Platform Plug-in UI. You can only rename an unpaired datastore that is unmounted. Do not rename a datastore using the vCenter administrator interface.

Note

Use as few datastores as possible to avoid startup delay and to keep clone savings high. Configuring more than 10 datastores could result in excessive startup delay.

To add a datastore, follow these steps:

Step 1. Choose an interface. From the vSphere Web Client Navigator, select vCenter Inventory Lists > Cisco HyperFlex Systems > Cisco HX Data Platform > cluster > Manage > Datastores. Then from HX Connect, select Datastores.

Step 2. Select the create datastore.

Step 3. Enter a name for the datastore. vSphere Web Client enforces a 42-character limit for the datastore name. Assign each datastore a unique name.

Step 4. Specify the datastore size. Choose GB or TB from the drop-down list.

Step 5. Specify the data blocksize. From HX Connect, choose 8K or 4K. The default is 8K. In the HX Data Platform Plug-in, the default is assumed. For VDI workloads, the default is 4K.

Step 6. Click OK to accept your changes or Cancel to cancel all changes.

Step 7. Verify the datastore. Click the Refresh icon if needed to display your new datastore. From the HX Data Platform plug-in, click the Manage > Datastores > Hosts tab to see the mount status of the new datastore.

If you check the datastore through the vSphere Client application, Host > Configuration> Datastores, the Drive Type is listed as Unknown. Listing NFS datastores as Unknown is expected vSphere behavior.

Next, prepare to mount a datastore:

 No VM, template, snapshot, or CD/DVD image resides on the datastore. This is the most common error while unmounting.

Storage I/O control is disabled for the datastore.

The datastore is not used for vSphere HA heartbeat.

The datastore is not used to host RDM metadata files. RDM is not supported.

The datastore is not used as a scratch location.

Note

You cannot select an NFS datastore as a destination for the persistent scratch location on ESXi. If you select the HX datastore for the persistent scratch location, it will be removed after the ESXi host reloads.

For all M5 servers, M.2 boot SSD is automatically selected for use as scratch. This is configured out of the box on any new install.

For HX240M4 (non-SED), Intel SSD is used for persistent logs/scratch (the same applies on 220M5/240M5, but on a different local SSD). For HX220M4 and HX240M4 (SED), there is no location to store the scratch partition. So, the only option is to use syslog for persistent logging over the network.