Step by Step: Adding a Netapp LUN to VMware vCenter.

In this series we have added a LUN to a Netapp Filer, and 

In this Step by Step part, we will add the storage we added in the previous article and make it accessible to vCenter.


Step 1:

Open up vCenter using vSphere:

Click on the host that you want to add the storage to, and then on the configuration tab:

Next click on "Storage"

And as you can see, there are various types of storage there, some are LUNs coming from a NetApp, and others are NFS exports, also exported by the NetApp filer.

Then click on "Rescan All" and you will get this popup confirmation, and click on "Ok"

You will get a message on the bottom of the screen that it's rescanning:

Now click on "Add Storage" and you will get this window:

You should then see your newly created LUN in the window:

Highlight this line, and click next (will be un-greyed when you choose the LUN)  You then get this screen below:

You will then be asked to name your datastore:

After that, you will be asked to choose the Maximum block size:

In our case it's not applicable, as our whole space is smaller than 256Gb. so we choose 1Mb/256Gb

You will then get a summary screen like below:

After you click Finish, you can then see the storage was added:

Now, you can add it to any VM's or use like any other storage on the system, for example. adding space to a VM:

Choose: Hard Disk

Create a New Virtual Disk:

We'll make it 16Gb for demo purposes:

You have to click on "Specify a Datastore" below, and choose our newly created storage:

Click on Next for the next screen unless you need special options for the virtual device node, you can select which SCSI device identifier to use for the drive. For example, if you select SCSI 0:2, the guest operating system recognizes the drive as ID 2 on controller 0.

You also have an unchecked option there to select the virtual disk Independent mode and select an option.

Option	Description
Persistent	The disk operates normally except that changes to the disk are permanent even if the virtual machine is reverted to a snapshot.
Nonpersistent	The disk appears to operate normally, but whenever the virtual machine is powered off or reverted to a snapshot, the contents of the disk return to their original state. All later changes are discarded.

Independent disks are not affected by snapshots.

Finally when you click on Finish, you will get this screen:

 This is it, now you have a new 16Gb "disk" on the system.

In the next article, we will do a step by step on actually using that space on the underlying Linux System!