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4.3. Adding New Virtual Disks to Virtual Machines

Before running your virtual machine, add at least one virtual disk to it. If your virtual machine was created from a template in which virtual disks have been defined, you can use this procedure if you wish to add additional virtual disks to a virtual machine.
To add a new virtual disk
  1. Select the required virtual machine. Select the Virtual Disks tab in the details pane and click New.
  2. The New Virtual Disk window displays.
    New Virtual Disk menu
    Figure 4.4. New Virtual Disk menu

    Enter a suitable Size for the virtual disk. You can retain the rest of the default settings and proceed to the next step, otherwise configure the following options:
    • Click the drop-down menu to select the Storage Domain where the virtual disk image is to be created. If your virtual machine already has a disk, this field cannot be changed as all disks of a virtual machine must reside on the same storage domain.
    • For Disk Type, select System if the virtual machine is to be bootable or Data if the virtual machine is to have a pre-determined amount of disk space.
    • For Interface, select VirtIO for virtual machines running Linux or IDE for virtual machines running Windows.
    • Click on the drop-down menu to select the disk Format.
      • For a Thin Provision virtual disk, backing storage is not reserved and is allocated as needed during runtime. This allows for storage over commitment.
      • A Pre-Allocated virtual disk has a reserved storage of the same size as the virtual disk itself. This results in better performance because no storage allocation is required during runtime.

      Note

      If you select Pre-Allocated as your disk format, the setup process can take a few minutes, during which time you will see the hourglass animation, and the action buttons for the disk will be unavailable.
    • Tick the Wipe after delete checkbox if you wish to remove all the data in the virtual machine after the virtual machine is deleted. Tick the Is bootable checkbox if you have selected System as your disk type.
  3. Click OK to save your settings. The new virtual disk displays in the details pane under the Virtual Disks tab.