Summary: How to manually create a vmware datastore.
Date: Around 2015
Refactor: 1 May 2025: Checked links and formatting.

This is a short how to on creating a data store in VMware ESX. It is a follow-up on this story. We're going to create a VMware store out of the created LUN. All of the steps are performed with the VMware infrastructure client.

Inside the VMware infrastructure client go to the first host in the cluster you want to connect to the new LUN, go to configuration and then storage adapters. Click the “rescan” button on the right:

You'll receive a new window. Although you haven't yet created a new volume there's no problem leaving the checkmark checked on “Scan for New VMFS Volumes”. It might save you a few seconds when you uncheck it:

After the new LUN is discovered it's added to the correct SCSI Targets:

Because there is new storage available you now want to create a VMFS volume out of it, so in the client, still in configuration go to storage. Click the “Add Storage” button on the right:

This will startup a wizard to create the new store:

Make up a name. A descriptive one would be nice, but it's up to you.

Now you've created a store you'll have to make sure every host in your VMware cluster can access it. This is the same procedure you did for the first host. Go into configuration, storage adapter and click “Rescan”, and repeat that for every host. Note that you might have to do that a few times per host before the new volume could get discovered.