Ordering an additional disk and using it in ESXi as datastore

• compute
• server
• esxi
• data
• storage
• hard-disk
• disk
• additonal
• usb

On Dedibox, you can order as many additional disks as you need. They can be used as additional Datastore in ESXi to store your virtual machines, for example.

A range of different SATA, SAS, and SSD disks is available. Depending on the server chassis, the number of available slots may differ.

This guide explains how to order an additional disk from the Dedibox console and how to use it as datastore in a local ESXi environment by following these steps:

Note that instead of adding additional disks to your server, you can also use remote storage based on our RPN-SAN service to add an additional datastore to your ESXi host.

Ordering an additional disk

1. Connect to the Dedibox console.

2. Click Server > Server list to see the list of your Dedibox dedicated servers.

3. Select the Dedibox to configure from the list and click Manage

4. Click Customize in the side menu:

   

5. Select either an USB disk or an Internal disk for your server.

   Important:

   The setup cost displayed is a one-time fee billed for the physical installation of the disk in the chassis.

   Important:

   For optimal performance, we recommend you use an internal disk as datastore.

   

6. Select the payment method for the installation fees and validate your order.

   
   Note:

   The disk is installed within approximately one hour from the moment you placed the order.

7. Connect to the ESXi web interface at https://your_scaleway_dedibox_ip/ and log in:

   

   The ESXi Dashboard displays.

   

8. Click Storage to enter the storage section.

Creating a virtual disk from the iDRAC interface on a hardware RAID

If your Dedibox uses a software RAID, you will see the disks listed directly. If this is the case, you can skip to the next part of this tutorial.

If you find that the newly installed disk does not appear in your ESXi web interface after installation, it may be the case that your server has a hardware RAID.

Depending on the configuration of your Dedibox, the server may come with a hardware RAID. On this type of server you cannot configure the datastore directly from ESXi. Instead, you must create a virtual disk from the KVM-over-IP interface of the server before adding the disk to ESXi. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Launch an iDRAC session from the server overview in the Dedibox console:

   

2. Log into iDRAC using the credentials available from the KVM over IP page of the Dedibox console.

3. Click Physical Disks to verify that the disk is physically available:

   

   A list of all installed disks and their status displays at the bottom of the page.

   

4. Check that all disks are OK, and click Virtual Disks in the side-menu.

   The list of all existing virtual disks displays.

5. Click Create in the menu bar to create a new virtual disk.

   

6. Select the newly installed disk from the list. You can keep the default parameters for a basic configuration, or fine-tune them towards your needs.

   

7. Click Create Virtual Disk to schedule the creation of a new virtual disk, usable for ESXi during the next reboot.

8. Click Overview in the side-menu to go back to the home page of iDRAC, then click Power Cycle System (cold boot) to reboot the machine. The virtual disk will be configured during the boot process.

   
   Important:

   Your machine will be unavailable during the creation of the new virtual disk. We recommend you to launch the reboot during the hours of low load on your machine.

After the reboot the new virtual disk shows up in the list of available disks in ESXi:

Adding the disk as a datastore to ESXi

When you add a disk as a new datastore, it is formatted and becomes available to store virtual machine images. You can decide on which datastore of the server you want to store the machine images. This can be useful if you have both HDD and SSD storage and you need different specifications for performance or storage.

1. Click New Datastore on the storage dashboard of the vSphere web client:
   
2. Select the option Create new VMFS datastore and click Next:
   
3. Select the device from the list of available devices and enter a name for the new datastore. Then click Next:
   
4. Select the partitioning options. To use the full disk as datastore, choose Use full disk, then click Next:
   
5. A summary displays. Click Finish to complete the wizard.
   Important:

   All existing data on the disk will be overwritten. Make sure that you have a backup of your data before launching the last step.

Increasing the size of an existing datastore

It is also possible to increase the size of an existing datastore. In this case, the capacity of the newly installed disk will be added to the main datastore of the server which can be useful to extend storage capacity for large virtual machines.

1. Click New Datastore in the storage dashboard of the vSphere web client.

   

2. Select Increase the size of an existing VMFS datastore and click Next:

   

3. Select the datastore to extend from the list and confirm by clicking on Next:

   

4. Select the disk to add to the datastore:

   

5. Select a partitioning configuration for the disk. To use all available disk space, go with the default settings and click Next:

   

   The summary displays.

6. Check the summary settings and click Finish:

   

The disk is added to the datastore and the total storage capacity of the datastore is increased.

For more information regarding the management of your virtual machines using the ESXi hypervisor, refer to our dedicated documentation.