Uploading VMDK's to vSAN datastore

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Issues uploading VMDK files to vSAN datastore

Environment

VMware vSAN

Resolution

You can upload VMDK files to a vSAN datastore. However, the following rules must be followed.

• Only stream-optimized VMDK files can be uploaded to a vSAN datastore. VMware stream-optimized file format is a monolithic sparse format compressed for streaming. To upload a VMDK file that is not in stream-optimized format, before uploading, it needs to be converted to stream-optimized format using the vmware-vdiskmanager command‐line utility. For more information, see Virtual Disk Manager User’s Guide.
• When a VMDK file is uploaded to a vSAN datastore, the VMDK file inherits the default policy of that datastore. The VMDK does not inherit the policy of the VM from which it was downloaded. vSAN creates the objects by applying the vsanDatastore default policy, which is usually RAID -1. The default policy of the datastore can be changed. See Change the Default Storage Policy for vSAN Datastores.
• A VMDK file must be uploaded to the VM home folder.