Tag: Software Defined Storage

One of the big topics at VMworld 2014 was VVols.  VMware announced it will be part of the next release of vSphere and almost every storage vendor on the planet is excited about the benefits that VVols bring.  I was working the VVol booth at VMworld and had the pleasure of being interviewed by VMworld TV to discuss the comparison between VSAN and VVols.  This was fun but unscripted and off the cuff so here it is:

VMworld TV Interview: Peter Keilty of VMware Discussed Virtual Volumes

What I’m trying to say is:

• VSAN is the first supported storage solution takes advantage of VVols.
• VVols, in vSphere.NEXT, will work in conjunction with VASA to allow all block and file based storage arrays to fully realize the benefits of Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM).
• Each storage vendor can write a VASA/VVol provider that registers with vCenter to integrate with the vSphere API’s and promote their storage capabilities to vCenter. I expect just about every storage array vendor to do this.  I have seen VVol demonstrations by EMC, NetApp, Dell, HP, and IBM.
• VVols eliminates the requirements of creating LUNs or Volumes on the arrays, instead, arrays present a pool or multiple pools of capacity in the form of storage containers that the hosts in the cluster see as datastores
• Through SPBM, administrators can create different service levels in the form of policy that can be satisfied by the underlying storage provider container.
• When VM’s get provisioned, they get assigned to a policy, and their objects (namespace, swap, vmdk’s, snap/clones) get placed as native objects into the container in the form of VVols.
• You can even assign objects from the same VM to different policy to give them different service levels, all potentially satisfied by the same storage provider or perhaps different provider containers.  In other words, a vmdk for an OS image might want dedupe enabled but a vmdk for a database might not want dedupe but might want cache acceleration.  Different policy can be set and each object can be assigned to the policy that will deliver the desired service level.  The objects could be placed into the same storage array pool but taking advantage of different storage array features.  And these can be changed on the fly as needed.

Like all the storage vendors out there, I’m very excited about the benefits of VVols.  For a full description and deep dive check out this awesome VMworld session by Rawlinson Rivera (http://www.punchingclouds.com/) and Suzy Visvanathan:

Virtual Volumes Technical Deep Dive