HDD Capacity Calculator

[SSO_Root]

Hi All,

I have a few questions.

1. I have a stand alone ESXi Host running 7U3. It has only 1 datastore that is running RAID 1.
   ESX is installed on this and it s the datastore.
   VMWare is showing only 1.6TB free of a 1.9TB drive.  I understand ESXi will use 35GB.
   How do I calculate what I should be left with?  Just wanting to understand if there is an issue.
   
   

What is the minimum capacity remaining on a datastore before the machine becomes unresponsive?

[BivasM]

basically the amount you see as free is what you can use on that datastore. since capacity is an issue you can provision vm's with thick provisioning so that they do not fight with each other. but since you have a single datastore keep in mind that you can not later convert them online (since that storage vmotion requires a different datastore to be available)

[Tinto1970]

If I understand well, you have two 1.9TB drives in RAID1 configuration, and the datastore free space is "only" 1.6TB?

If so, I think it's normal because the 1.9 size is "unformatted": the really usable size of the HDD is less than the "raw" amount which is written on the HDD's box 😉