Provisioning a lazyZeroedThick managed virtual disk on NFS datastore has vCenter Server reporting the disk as thin

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

On most NFS servers, the default virtual disk format is thin. However, you can create a thick-provisioned virtual disk on an NFS datastore if your NFS storage array supports thick provisioning through vSphere APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). Your ability to create a thick-provisioned disk depends on whether the VAAI plug-in is installed on your ESXi host and on vendor-specific implementation of the plug-in.

If you attempt to create a thick-provisioned disk on the NFS datastore that does not support thick provisioning, the disk is created in thin format.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vCenter Server 6.5.x

Resolution

For information about support of thick provisioning on your NFS storage, contact your storage vendor.