This article provides the step by step procedure to configure a Virtual Volume (VVol) based vSphere environment using Dell EMC Unity SAN storage. You can go through my previous post to get an understanding of the differences between VMFS and VVol.
Step1: Register a new storage provider in vCenter
Note: Registering a storage provider exposes all the array capabilities to vCenter through VASA API.
Select: vCenter server -> Configure -> Storage providers -> Register a new storage provider (+)
Register new storage provides in vCenter
After successful registration of storage provider
Step2: Create a VVol datastore on the storage array (Unity)
Create VVol datastore (storage container)
Provide a name
Select capability profiles for the VVol datastore
Note: Each pool has its own characteristics and is associated with a specific capability profile. Adding capability profiles to a VVOL datastore basically adds the corresponding pools to that VVOL construct. In the above figure we have added 3 capability profiles, which means pool_01/02/03 are now part of VVOL_Datastore_01.
The storage container (VVOL datastore) has been created on the array and the next step is to add it to ESXi hosts.
Step3: Add a new datastore in the vSphere environment through vCenter
Add new VVol datastore
Select the VVol datastore and provide a name
VVol datastore creation complete
VVol datastore
Step4: Create VM storage policies
Select VM Storage Policies
Create VM storage policy
Select vCenter and provide a name
Storage type and rule
Select service level
Select the compatible storage
Now the storage policy (Platinum) has been created. Similarly, I have created Silver and Bronze policies which are shown below.
Sample storage policies
Step5: Migrate virtual machines to VVol datastore
Migrate VM01 to VVol datastore
While migrating the VM, you can choose the disk format and the VM storage policy and it will display the compatible VVOL datastores.
Select compatible storage
If you would like to apply storage policies at disk level you can edit the VM storage policies setting of the VM and apply policy as per the requirement as shown below.
Use of multiple datastores for different performance capabilities
Management difficulties as a single VM may span across multiple datastores
VM centric
vSphere is now aware of array capabilities through VASA provider
No pre-provisioning
One VVOL datastore can represent the whole array
Storage policies can be applied per vmdk level
Some of the vSphere operations are offloaded to array using VAAI (full cloning, snapshots)
VVOL snapshots are faster (different from traditional snapshots with redo logs)
Note: The explanations below regarding SAN is based on Dell EMC Unity (hybrid array) VMFS environment A traditional VMFS datastore setup is given below. Say, you have two VMs. One with 3 virtual disks and the second one with 2 virtual disks. And your array has 4 storage pools with specific capabilities. Based on those capabilities the pools are classified into 4 service levels (Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze). In this case you need to provision 4 datastores/ LUNs from the respective pool to meet requirements of the two virtual machines.
VMFS
You can clearly see that the first VM is spanned across 3 datastores and the second VM is spanned across 2 datastores. If your environment has hundreds and thousands of VMs management becomes too complicated. In this case, as the datastores are properly named the vSphere admin can easily identify the service level/ capability of a specific datastore. But if naming convention is not followed, then vSphere admin has to contact the storage admin to know about the capabilities of that specific datastore/ LUN. Again lots of communication needed, making it a complex process!
VVOL environment
Now let’s have a look at the VVOL environment which is shown the figure below. You are having the same array, but instead of provisioning datastores/ LUNs from the respective pools, here we are creating one vvol datastore. The array has 4 storage pools, each having specific capabilities like drive type, RAID level, tiering policy, FAST Cache ON/ OFF etc. and are classified into 4 service levels as Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. So each pool has its own capability profile. You can provide any name, but here I just gave the same name as the service level of each pool.
Pool_01 -> Service level: Platinum -> Capability profile: Platinum
Pool_02 -> Service level: Silver -> Capability profile: Silver Pool_03 -> Service level: Bronze -> Capability profile: Bronze Pool_04 -> Service level: Gold -> Capability profile: Gold Note: vvol datastores cannot be created without capability profile
Next steps are:
Create vvol datastore in the SAN
Provide a name for the vvol datastore
Add capability profiles that need to be part of the vvol datastore
In this case, all 4 capability profiles are part of the vvol datastore
You can also limit the amount of space that will be used from each capability profile by the vvol datastore
Once it’s done, vvol datastore is created in the SAN
VVOL
At this point, you can go ahead and configure host access to this vvol datastore. Now you have to let your Vsphere environment know about the capabilities of the storage array. That is done by registering the new storage provider on your vCenter server making use of VASA (VMware vStorage API for Storage Awareness) provider. Once registered the vSphere environment will communicate with the VASA provider through the array management interface (OOB network) which forms a control path. Next step is creating a vvol datastore on the ESXI host which you provided access earlier. For each vvol datastore created on the storage array, two protocol endpoints (PEs) will be automatically generated to communicate with an ESXI host forming a data path. If you create another vvol datastore on the array and provide access to same ESXI host, two more PEs will be created. PEs act like a target. And on the ESXI side, if you look at the storage devices, you can see 2 proxy LUNs which connects to the respective PEs.
Now you have to create VM storage policies based on service levels. Here you have 4 service levels, so you have to create 4 storage policies. Assign storage policy per vmdk basis as per requirements.
Eg: Storage_Policy_Gold -> VMDK 02 (second VM) -> it will be placed in Pool_04 automatically
So in this case, instead of having 4 VMFS datastores we needed only 1 VVOL datastore which has all the required capabilities. This means you don't need to provision more LUNs from the SAN. Storage management becomes easy with just one VVOL. There is more granularity with SPBM at each VMDK level. With VVOLs the SAN is aware of all the VMs and its corresponding files hosted on it. This makes space reclamation very easy and straight. The moment a VM or a VMDK is deleted, that space will be immediately made free as SAN is having the complete insight of virtual machines stored in it. Data mobility between different storage pools based on its service level becomes effortless as it is handled directly by the SAN internally based on SPBM. All together VVOL simplifies storage/ LUN management.
