VMware Virtual Volumes (vVols)
The system provides native support for VMware vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) through a VASA Provider (also known as a Storage Provider), which sends and receives information about storage that is used by VMware vSphere to the vCenter Server.
Through VASA, the system also supports VMware Virtual Volumes (also known as vVols), which allows VMware vCenter to automate the creation, deletion and mapping of volumes.
Before vSphere can be used to provision vVols, the storage system administrator must first enable vVols on the storage system. It is recommended that vVols are enabled by using the management GUI as this simplifies the setup process.
When vVols are enabled, the following objects are configured on the system:
- An ownership group
- A user account and user group
- A metadata volume
- A child pool with an associated provisioning policy
An ownership group is created that separates the resources that belong to VMware from the other resources in the system, and ensures that only these resources can be managed by VMware vCenter.
The storage system administrator delegates ownership of Virtual Volumes to VMware vCenter and the VASA Provider by creating a user account with the VASA Provider role. Although the storage system administrator can complete certain actions on volumes and pools that are owned by the VASA Provider, the VMware environment retains management responsibility for Virtual Volumes.
A metadata volume is created to store metadata for Virtual Volumes and vSphere storage policies. The system administrator selects a storage pool to provide capacity for the metadata volume. With each new volume created by the VASA Provider, VMware vCenter defines a small amount of metadata that is stored on the metadata volume. The metadata volume is exclusively used by the VASA Provider and cannot be deleted while vVols exist or mapped to hosts.
The storage system administrator decides what storage to allocate for Virtual Volumes by creating a child pool and assigning it to the VASA ownership group. Each vVols child pool is presented as a storage container in vSphere, from which a vVols datastore can be created. The storage system administrator must also associate a provisioning policy with the child pool, to specify how data Virtual Volumes, known as vmdk Virtual Volumes, are provisioned.
Storage Virtualize supports asynchronous replication for Virtual Volumes between two storage systems in different locations. The storage administrator preconfigures replication groups for vSphere by creating volume groups for vVols and assigning a replication policy to each group. The VMware administrator can use storage policies in vCenter to define the replication requirements for virtual machines, such as the second site where the VMs should be replicated and a recovery point objective. Virtual Volumes for multiple virtual machines can be grouped to manage them as a single unit for failover and disaster recovery.