Dell Storage Manager 2020 R1 Administrator's Guide

VMware Virtual Volume Concepts

The following figure shows the virtual volumes (VVols) model defined by VMware.

The VVol framework introduces these components:

• VASA provider — A VASA provider (VP) is a software component that acts as a storage awareness service for vSphere. Storage vendors develop VASA providers to work with their specific storage arrays.
• Protocol endpoint (PE) — A protocol endpoint is the connection used for VVol storage, and the means by which you can access VVol storage containers. The protocol endpoint is also where access controls are placed and initiators are queried to ensure that they are permitted access to the storage containers and virtual volumes. Protocol endpoints are created and presented by Dell Storage Manager when a VMware ESXi 6.0 server type is created in Dell Storage Manager.

  vSphere recognizes them as protocol endpoints after the VASA provider is registered and a Storage Container is created using Dell Storage Manager.

• Storage container — A storage container is a quantity of storage made available for the placement of virtual volumes-based VMs. Each array has at least one storage container. Each storage container has one or more protocol endpoints associated with it.
  NOTE:Storage containers are not supported outside of the virtual volumes context.

  You must use Dell Storage Manager (connected to a Data Collector Manager) to create storage containers.