Vcap5-Dca Objective 1.2

Front 1

Two types of storage that can be provisioned

Back 1

Block Storage - Local, iSCSI, FCoE and FC
NAS Storage - NFS (NFS v3)

Front 2

Provision storage - GUI

Back 2

Host > Configuration > Storage > Add Storage

Front 3

Provision storage - CLI

Back 3

First obtain the device ID on which a partition is to be created - esxcli storage core path list

To view the partition information of this device:

partedUtil get /vmfs/devices/disks/<deviceID>

Devices without a partition will only have a single line of information

To create a partition use the following command:

partedUtil setptbl /vmfs/devices/disks/<deviceID> gpt "1, 128, 20971500 'GUID' 0"

Front 4

Create a VMFS volume - CLI

Back 4

vmkfstools -C vmfs5 -S volumename /vmfs/devices/disks/<deviceID:partitionnumber>

Front 5

NFS Provisioning procedure - CLI

Back 5

esxcli storage nfs add -H IPaddress -s <sharename> -v name

Front 6

To remove an NFS Share - CLI

Back 6

esxcli storage nfs remove -v volumenname

Front 7

Storage Metrics - vSphere Client

Back 7

Four types of metrics of interest:

Datastore, Disk, Storage Adapter, Storage Path

The default metrics for datastores, storage adapters and storage paths are latency based whilst for disks it is throughput

Front 8

Use of the df command

Back 8

df command stands for diskfilesystem and is used to display the file systems that are mounted on a particular host

Front 9

df command examples - CLI

Back 9

df -h | awk '/VMFS*/ || /NFS/'

Front 10

For datastores that are highly utilised there are a number of ways to rectify this

Back 10

Add more space
Add extent
Delete virtual machines that aren't required any more
Remove unneeded virtual disks

Front 11

Use vmkfstools to create virtual disks

Back 11

Create a 10GB virtual disk:

vmkfstools -c 10GB <path to VMDK>

Create a 10GB virtual disk provisioend as eagerzeroedthick and an LSILOGIC adapter:

vmkfstools -c 10GB -d eagerzeroedthick -a lsilogic <pathtoVMDK>

To extend a virtual disk from 10GB to 20GB use the following command:

vmkfstools -X 20GB <pathtoVMDK>

To clone an exsting virtual disk use the follwoing command:

vmkfstools -I <pathofdisktoclone> <pathtonewVMDK>

Front 12

Create RDMs

Back 12

Create a virtual compatibilty mode RDM use the following command:

vmkfstools -r /vmfs/devices/disks/<diskID> <pathtoRDMpointerfile>

Create a physical mode RDM use the following command:

vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/<diskID> <pathtoRDMpointerfile>

Front 13

Inflate a virtual disk - GUI

Back 13

Right click on a disk via the datastore browser and choose inflate

Front 14

Inflate a virtual disk - CLI

Back 14

vmkfstools -j <path to VMDK>

Front 15

Datastore clusters

Back 15

A datastore cluster is a collection of datastores with shared resources and a shared management interface

Front 16

Create Datastore Cluster - GUI

Back 16

Navigate to Datastores and Datastore Clusters view
Right click on datastore > New Datastore cluster
Choose whether Storage DRS is enabled
Choose the automation level
Choose whether to inlcude I/O metrics
Select the clusters that the datastore cluster should be added to
Select the datastores to add to the datastore cluster

Front 17

Create Datastore Cluster - PowerCLI

Back 17

Use new-datastorecluster and set-datastorecluster