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Virtual Volumes



Virtual Volume (VVols) is basically a latest introduction into Vsphere 6.0 environment which has significantly change the architecture of storage part.

Traditionally into vsphere environment we are having a concept of LUN to provide storage into ESXi into which VMware administrator used to provision virtual machine into that peace of storage (LUN). In this process all vm’s which are deployed are depended into that LUN having dependency into it. Like, if that LUN having any issue like all path went down or its loosed its connectivity from ESXi or storage, into this case all its derivative vm’s will get affected. That dependency has moved out into VVol


VVol has introduced where virtual machine is directly connected to SAN (Raw area of storage), not on LUN concept. 

Architecture of VVol



In Virtual Volumes storage has altogether changes compared to old architecture of Vsphere. VVols completely change the way storage is presented, managed and consumed and certainly for the better. Most storage vendors are on board as their software needs to be able to support VVols and they’ve been champing at the bit for VVols to be released.

For supporting VVols, Storage (SAN) need to have VASA capable as its API is used to for communication which Storage and Vsphere environment.

VVols has change the concent of LUN. At the top of storage, storage administrator is used to create storage container which is a logical abstraction on to which  virtual volumes are mapped on the top.  Single storage container can have multiple virtual volumes based on the capability of Storage Array.

Esxi has no direct connection I/O to connect to storage container or storage array. Protocol Endpoint (PE) are the access point from the host to the storage system, which are created by storage administrators. All path and policies are administrated by the protocol endpoints. Protocol Endpoints are compliant with both, Iscsi and NFS. They are intended to replace the concept of LUN and mount points.
PE is like LUN or mount points. They can be mounted or can be discovered by multiple host into the cluster to perform several activity like vmotion, DRS etc..

Virtual Datastore are created on the top of Vsphere while using VVol as Datastore is required for many terms into Vsphere environment, like while vmotion, svmotion, SDRS and others.


Happy Sharing..





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