Creating a new vApp in vCloud Director fails with the error: The requested operation will exceed the VDC's storage quota

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• In vCloud Director, attempting to create a new vApp in an Organization Virtual Data Center (Org vDC) fails.
• Attempting to provision a new vApp in an Org vDC fails:
• You see the error:
  
  The requested operation will exceed the VDC's storage quota

Environment

VMware Cloud Director 5.5.x
VMware Cloud Director 5.1.x
VMware Cloud Director 1.5.x

Cause

Resolution

To resolve this issue and allow vApp deployment, check if there are any limits applied on the storage profile and what type of allocation model is in use in the Org vDC.

An overview of current Allocation Models

• Allocation Pool
  Only a percentage (chosen limit) of the resources you allocate are committed to the Org vDC. You can specify the percentage, which allows you to over-commit resources.

• Pay-As-You-Go
  Allocated resources are only committed when users create vApps in the Org vDC. You can specify the maximum amount of CPU and memory resources to commit to the Org vDC.
  
  
• Reservation Pool
  All of the resources you allocate are committed to the Org vDC.
  

You cannot change the allocation model for an Org vDC, however, you can modify some variables within the allocation model. Modified variables only affect vApps that are powered on from that point forward. vApps that are already running are not affected. The usage information that vCloud Director reports for this Org vDC does not reflect the new settings until you stop and restart all running vApps that use the modified allocation model.

Notes:

• If the chosen allocation model is Allocation Pool and the allocated resources have reached the configured threshold, you can increase the limit.
  
  Note: The vDC does not take into account thin provisioned virtual machine hard disks when calculating the Requested amount of storage per Org vDC. The vDC uses the requested amount of storage when calculating the storage usage and available storage per Org vDC.
  
  
• In a Pay-As-You-Go allocation model, it is possible to configure unlimited storage resources but this is not mandatory.
  
  
• If the underlying datastore is full or almost full, you can expand the datastore or add an extent. You can adjust the appropriate limits depending on what allocation model is in use. For more information, see Growing or expanding a VMFS volume or datastore (1017662).

Additional Information

By default, thin provisioning is not enabled and fast provisioning is enabled.

Notes:

• Fast provisioning requires vCenter Server 5.0 or later and ESXi 5.0 hosts or later.
• If the Org vDC is based on a provider vDC that contains ESXi/ESX 4.x hosts, you must disable fast provisioning.
  
  To disable fast provisioning in an Org vDC:
  
  1. Open the vCloud Director client.
  2. Click the Manage & Monitor tab and click Organization VDCs in the left pane.
  3. Right-click the organization vDC and click Properties.
  4. Click the Storage tab.
  5. Deselect Enable fast provisioning.
     
     Note: This disables fast provisioning for virtual machines in the Org vDC.
     
     
  6. Click OK.
     

For related information on Allocation Models and Storage Profiles in vCloud Director, see:

• Allocation Models for Organizations using vCloud Director (1026290)
• Best practices for migrating the vCloud infrastructure to new storage in vCloud Director best practices (2058094)
• Calculating the storage size to be allocated for virtual machines in vCloud Director (2043173)
• About the *(Any) Storage Profile (2045534)
• vSphere Blog - Using Storage Profiles with vCloud Director

Unable to grow or expand a VMFS volume or datastore
Allocation Models for Organizations using vCloud Director
Calculating the storage size to be allocated for virtual machines in vCloud Director
About the *(Any) Storage Profile
Best practices for migrating the VMware vCloud infrastructure to a new storage in VMware vCloud Director