NetApp VSC 4.1 Series - Part 1/7: How to Provision an NFS Datastore

This post is the first part of a how-to series using the VSC 4.1 (NetApp Virtual Storage Console) for VMware.

vSphere Client > Home > Inventory > Hosts and Clusters

- Select the VMware vSphere Cluster to which you want to provision more storage.

- Hit the “Provision datastore” button.

Image: NetApp VSC 4.1 “Provision datastore” button

NetApp Datastore Provisioning Wizard - Step 1: Specify the target storage controller

- Select the ‘Target Storage Controller’ and click Next >

Image: NetApp Datastore Provisioning Wizard Step 1

NetApp Datastore Provisioning Wizard - Step 2: Select the datastore type you would like to create

- Select NFS and click Next >

Image: NetApp Datastore Provisioning Wizard Step 2

Note: The VMFS option is greyed out when the VSC detects FCP is not available, and there are no enabled iSCSI interfaces on the storage controller. The VSC also detects if the hosts support FCP or not.

NetApp Datastore Provisioning Wizard - Step 3: Specify the details for the new datastore

- Input details as required: Size (GB), Datastore name, Aggregate, Thin Provision or not, Auto-grow or not, Auto-grow options if enabled (Grow increment (GB), Maximum datastore size (GB)), and click Next >

Image: NetApp Datastore Provisioning Wizard Step 3

NetApp Datastore Provisioning Wizard - Step 4: Ready to complete the configuration changes

- If all is okay click Apply

Image: NetApp Datastore Provisioning Wizard Step 4

And that’s it, nice and simple! Within 30 seconds or so a new datastore is provisioned.

Image: vSphere Client Recent Tasks for NetApp datastore allocation