Datastore Folders: Once you have a significant number of datastores it is possible to create a folder structure for holding them. This can be useful if you want to exclude access to certain type of storage based on permissions, as datastore folders like any object in vCenter can hold a permissions ACL. You can see datastore folders in the same context as folder in the VM and Template views. It merely allows to layout your inventory in a logical manner. They can also useful when run PowerCLI reports, as they give you an object type to filter on. You could create folders that represented your different types (local, remote, FC, iSCSI, NFS) or by the systems that have access (NYC-Gold01 Cluster, NYC-Silver01 cluster and so on) they choice is yours.
1. In the web-client click the Storage icon
2. Right-Click the Datacenter object, and under All vCenter Actions, select New Storage Folder
3. Specify a friendly name for the Storage Folder
4. In the Related Objects Tab and Top Level Objects column – select the datastores, and drag and drop them to the folder. It is also possible use the Datastore column to filter out objects just to show datastores only.
Datastore Names. When VMFS volume or NFS datastore is mounted it must have a unique name to the host and also to the wider cluster/vCenter environment. vSphere does a good job of validating the uniqueness of datastores names. However, with local storage you might observe a serialization process that looks like this:
This is caused by default installation to local storage creating a VMFS volume called “datastore”. When multiple VMware ESX hosts are added to vCenter – this naming clash is detected and vCenter changes the datastore name adding (1), (2), (3) for each host added into the environment. Many administrator find this unsightly and find it difficult to identify which “datastore” belongs unique to which VMware ESX host. The use of the “Related Objects” column can be useful in assisting with properly identifying the datastore, and to which VMware ESX host it is mounted.
A right-click of the datastore and select Rename
