Users Guide

Storage capabilities Common use/Performance range
Replicated 10K/15K
Drives
Storage Type Virtual disks containing high-performance physical disks
Performance
Level
High (used in most standard replicated environments)
Replicated NLSAS
Drives
Storage Type Replicated virtual disks containing Near-Line SAS (NL-
SAS) physical disks 10K RPM or less
Performance
Level
Intermediate performance, good for bulk storage
requirements
For assigning these capabilities in vSphere, see Using the VASA provider.
Profile-driven and policy-based storage
The VASA provider supports profile-driven storage management by categorizing virtual disks based on
performance and reporting its performance capability to vCenter. You can use this information to
establish profiles based on specific application performance requirements. Benefits of this approach are:
• Rapid and intelligent provisioning of applications
• Application service levels that match available storage
• Information on the available storage pool
vSphere policy-based storage management enables you to further provision VMs by automating
datastore placement decisions.
Storage service-level agreements
The VASA provider replaces the requirement to maintain storage capability spreadsheets for each LUN.
Instead, you can deliver the best-matched resources to any service-level agreement (SLA) required by the
VM.
The VASA provider enables you to discover and monitor storage array SLA properties based on availability,
security, and performance. You can then use VASA to enforce storage VM SLAs and create end-to-end
storage SLA guarantees for each VM.
Storage distributed resource scheduler
The VASA provider extends VMware’s Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) functionality to data storage
by enabling a Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS) to operate on a group of datastores with
similar capabilities. With the VASA provider, SDRS can determine whether a storage array can support
SDRS migration, and whether migration is recommended.
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