VMware vSphere 5.0 brought in a considerable number of storage related improvements.   One of these is VASA, which stands for VMware APIs for Storage Awareness - in which VMware yet again manages to place an acronym (API) inside an acronym (someone needs to send Grammar Girl down there to beat them up).   But I digress...

VASA improves VMware vSphere’s ability to monitor and automate storage related operations.  The VASA Provider delivers information about storage topology, capabilities, and state, as well as events and alerts to VMware. The VASA Provider is a standard vSphere management plug-in that is deployed once on each vCenter server to interact with VMware APIs for Storage Awareness.

You will of course need a VMware vCenter and an  ESXi server both running version 5.0.   Your XIV can be a Generation2 running 10.2.2 or 10.2.4 firmware or an XIV Gen3.

You can download the installation instructions for the IBM VASA provider here.
You can download the release notes for the IBM VASA provider here.
You can download the IBM VASA provider itself here.

If none of these links work, then the IBM Fix Central page for every XIV related file ishere.

So what does it do?   Well according to Steve Foskett - not much (yet).

I am at the Melbourne Storage Symposium all this week, but I will write a post on my experiences with the provider as soon as I get back into my lab.  Expect something in the next few days.