4.1 Adding VMDK Disk Across ESXi Guest Machines

  1. Launch the vSphere Web Client.

  2. Right click the virtual machine (Node 1), and select Edit Settings.

  3. Click Add other device > SCSI controller.

    1. In New SCSI Controller, select VMware Paravirtual.

    2. Expand New SCSI controller and in SCSI Bus Sharing, select Virtual or Physical depending on your requirement.

      • Virtual: Select this option, if you want to share a virtual disk between VMs on the same ESXi host.

      • Physical: Select this option, if you want to share a virtual disk between VMs on different ESXi hosts.

  4. Click Add hard disk > New hard disk with the following settings:

    • Location: Select a shared datastore, that will store the disk images of the VMs.

    • Disk Provisioning: Select Thick provisioned, eagerly zeroed. Other options are not recommended.

    • Virtual Device Node: Select existing SCSI controller that you created in Step 3 (or the default node value offered as appropriate if you have added multiple disks.)

    • Disk Mode: Select Independent - persistent.

    • Sharing: Select Multi-writer sharing.

  5. Perform the following on all the nodes.

    1. Perform Step 2 and Step 3 on all the nodes.

    2. Click Add hard disk > Existing hard disk and browse and select the shared disk (VMDK disk file) that you have created in Step 4.

      On completing the above steps, the shared disk is available on all the nodes.