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 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.

    • Controller Location: Select the default controller location based on the administrator's configuration. For example, SCSI controller 0.

    • Disk Mode: Select Independent - persistent.

    • Sharing: Select Multi-writer sharing.

  4. Perform the following on all the nodes.

    1. Perform Step 2 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 3.

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