Creating a DataCore Virtual Disk

Administrators may create and serve DataCore SANsymphony Virtual Disk (vDisk) to the ESXi host from the Hosts tab view.

  1. Click the Hosts tab and select the Serve Existing or New Virtual Disk option.

    2. A dialog box is displayed with two tabs. By default, the Serve Existing Virtual Disk tab is selected.

  2. Click the Create and Serve New Virtual Disk Tab.

  3. Enter the applicable details in the following fields:

    • Use Virtual Disk Template – A drop-down list of existing templates. The Virtual Disk Templates give administrators greater control over the characteristics and behavior of the storage that is being served to the ESXi hosts. These templates can specify the SANsymphony Disk Pools, from which storage is to be allocated, deduplication and encryption modes, disk mirroring, and default snapshot Disk Pool.

    • Virtual Disk Name – Name of the vDisk

    • Virtual Disk Size – Size of the vDisk. Select the applicable unit (Gigabyte (GB) or Terabyte (TB)) from the drop-down list. Some of the vDisk space will be used to store VMFS partition data, and therefore the space available for application data will be less than the space specified here.

    • Quantity – Number of vDisks to be created and served to the selected hosts.

    • Data Copies – The value "1" in the drop-down list indicates a non-mirrored Virtual Disk. The value "2" indicates a 2-copy mirrored virtual disk. The value "3" indicates a 3-copy mirrored virtual disk.

    • Encryption – Provides SANsymphony encryption. By default, this toggle is disabled.

  4. Click Create and Serve.

  • Based on the specified criteria (mirror vs non-mirror, encryption, available pool space, etc.), SANsymphony automatically selects the most appropriate Disk Pool where the created vDisk will be available.
  • The vDisk may not be immediately available to the ESXi Host as several downstream actions must be completed on the ESXi host. For example, HBA rescans. This may take seconds or minutes depending on how quickly the ESXi host completes these actions.
  • There is also an option called Serve Existing Virtual Disk if a new vDisk is not required.