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. Renaming the HX Datastore from the
vCenter administration interface is not supported, and should not be done.
Before starting, review the following support notes:
Important
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Do not rename an HX datastore from vCenter. The datastore names shown in HX Connect or Intersight and in the ESXi host datastore
(that appears in vCenter) must be identical including case sensitive. If they are not identical, some operations such as expansion,
mount/unmount of a datastore will be impacted.
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Enabling encryption on your cluster is only possible during the datastore creation procedure. Encryption cannot be disabled
for a datastore once enabled.
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For best start-up and upgrade performance, use the fewest number of datastores as possible.
The Cisco HyperFlex best practice recommendation is to not exceed 15 number of datastores.
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The impact of using more than 15 datastores per cluster include:
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Excessive start-up delay when you perform maintenance work (updates, upgrades and reboots). The start-up delay of each host
is linear to the number of datastores created. Each host experiences a 30-second additive delay per datastore created.
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Timeouts on upgrade.
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Datastores fail to mount.
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Keep the number of datastores to as few as possible to avoid start-up delay and to keep clone savings high.
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HX Native Snapshots are not supported with multiple datastores.
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If using an M4 node, never use either the HyperFlex NFS or local Springpath datastore for ESXi logging or coredump partition. If using an M5/M6 node, you can use any left over space in the HyperFlex NFS or local Springpath datastore for these purposes.
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When VMs have flat vmdk files, one with thin provisioned and one with thick provisioned, the total combined storage usage
of all flat VMDK files as reported by the vCenter/ESXi and HX Connect could be higher than the Datastore usage itself reported
by vCenter & HX Connect. This could be due to ESXi and vCenter space reporting for each VM files ignoring the "uniqueBytes"
attributes sent by underlying NFS storage in Extended stats and attributes via VAAI APIs.
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For Vmware ESXi environments, ensure Storage I/O is disabled for all HyperFlex datastores in the vCenter. This setting is
on a per datastore setting, and enabling this can cause unexpected performance impacts.
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