Create and apply a new RAID 5 storage policy to save space

[AlanRaczek]

We are running 4 ESXi 6.5U3 servers and vCenter Server appliance 6.7U3 in a vSAN environment. I want to free up a little space prior to an upgrade of the ESXi machines to 6.7U3. I created a new policy like this:

Policy Structure : enable rules for vSAN storage

vSAN: Availability/Site disaster tolerance NONE, Failures to tolerate 1 RAID 5

            Advanced Policies and tags were left at default

Storage compatibility : vSAN

In applying the policy I see: VM Home, Hard Disk 1 . What exactly does this refer to?

Should VM be off or on when applying the policy, does it matter?

I would assume if I change the storage policy to RAID 5 this would be transparent to the actual OS, that the OS does not see the change? Would make sense. I know there could be a performance hit.

TIA

[depping]

You should select all the objects of the VM. 

VM Home is basically the object where we store things like the VMX file for the VM

Hard disk 1 is the Virtual Disk of the VM. 

Simply just always apply the policy to ALL of the components. But do mind: in order to go from RAID-1 to RAID-5, you will temporarily consume more disk space during the conversion. After the VM has been converted from R1 to R5 the space will be made available to the datastore.

[AlanRaczek]

Thank you for the information , this helps. In "select all objects of the VM" where am I looking for this? I could have sworn I saw this somewhere but can't see it in the storage policy or where I apply it to the VM.

Ty.

[depping]

When you go to the VM, right click, go to VM policies, click edit policies, then simply select the new policy as shown below and make sure the "per disk" option isn't on.