EMC Unity – VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols)

VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols) are a new VMware object type that corresponds to a Virtual Machine (VM) disk, and its snapshots and fast-clones. There are different types of VVol objects, including Config-VVol, Data-VVol (equivalent to VMDK), Memory-VVol, and Swap-VVol.

VMware vSphere 6.0 and later uses Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM) to define application or VM-specific storage requirements. These storage policies dictate which storage containers are compatible with VVols. A capability profile, configured by the storage administrator, is a set of performance characteristics for a VVol datastore on the storage system. These characteristics are based on the underlying storage pools and include three categories of capabilities:

1. Service level-based provisioning
2. Usage tags
3. Storage properties

Capability profiles are populated through the VMware vStorage API for Storage Awareness (VASA) protocol from the storage system into vSphere or vCenter. These capability profiles map to VMware VVol storage policy profiles. When a storage policy is selected in vSphere or vCenter, only those VVol datastores compatible with these policies will appear as eligible storage containers for the virtual volume. NAS and SCSI Protocol Endpoints (PEs) are access points for ESXi host I/O communication from VMs to their VVol datastores on the storage system.

Creating virtual volumes involves several steps in Unisphere. This prepares the storage system for the deployment of virtual volumes from the ESXi host. The following is the workflow for Block VVols on Unity.

In EMC Unisphere

Firsly you prepare some Storage Pools on EMC Unisphere. In this example, prepared three Storage Pools by virutal disk, ie Extreme Performance Pools, Performance Pools and Capacity Pools.

According to your requirement, create Capability Profiles and add your VMware ESXi host into EMC Unisphere. Add your VMware ESXi host into EMC Unisphere. In this example, added two ESXi 6.0 hosts into it. And create iSCSI or FC interface for the host access. Finally create the VVol Datastores.

In VMware vCenter

Create and configure the iSCSI or FC connection on each ESXi host. Then add Unity Storage (VASA) Provider on VMware vCenter. Add the VVols Datastore on each ESXi host.

Create you required VM Storage policy and tags into each VVols Datastores. In this example, created one VVol_Policy1 as VM Storage policy. Finally apply each VM Storage policy into each VVols Datastores.