I have read several articles stating this is possible such as With vSphere 5.0 and HA can I share datastores across clusters?
However, we presented a 100GB datastore to multiple clusters under one vCenter and only the first cluster is allowed to mount the datastore.
The other cluster wants to reformat it when attempting to add the datastore.
is this not possible any longer on vSphere 6?
thanks
Sharing the datastores across the clusters is still possible. If you have mounted the LUN on first ESXi and formatted the datastores with VMFS, you should be able to see it on the other ESXi also. If you are unable to see, try rescan the HBA/datastores on the ESXis.
If you were asked to reformat the LUN even after formatting with VMFS on first host, please re-check on how its presented from the storage end.
For more information, see https://communities.vmware.com/thread/337600
Sharing the datastores across the clusters is still possible. If you have mounted the LUN on first ESXi and formatted the datastores with VMFS, you should be able to see it on the other ESXi also. If you are unable to see, try rescan the HBA/datastores on the ESXis.
If you were asked to reformat the LUN even after formatting with VMFS on first host, please re-check on how its presented from the storage end.
For more information, see https://communities.vmware.com/thread/337600
thanks! pointed me in the right direction.
from the provided link, manually running esxcfg-volume -m "vmfs_label_name" was the key to mounting the datastores on the subsequent hosts