Release Notes

27 Dell Virtual Storage Manager: Installation Considerations and Local Data Protection | 2079-BP-V-VSM
5 VASA Provider
The PS Series VSM virtual appliance includes the PS Series VASA Provider. The VASA Provider is a set of APIs that enable
vCenter to communicate with the virtual environment’s underlying storage. This non-SCSI communication with the PS
Series array enables vSphere to learn the capabilities of each datastore volume presented to the virtual environment.
These datastore volume capabilities are displayed in a number of locations in the vSphere Client interface, providing
virtual administrators with valuable information about their storage infrastructure.
VSM displays these datastore volume capabilities in the Datastore section of the plugin, in the System Storage
Capability column, as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9 Storage capability of a datastore as shown in the legacy vCenter Client
While these capabilities of VASA do not require a particular vSphere license, there are three vSphere features that
leverage this information from VASA: Storage Based Profile Management (formerly Profile-Driven Storage), Storage
Distributed Resource Scheduler, and Virtual Volumes. Details on Virtual Volumes are provided in section 7 of this
document.
Storage Based Profile Management uses the VASA-provided information to ensure that virtual machines reside on the
datastores that meet the VM needs. An administrator can create various storage profiles that reflect particular data
protection needs. When a VM is created, the administrator can select the storage profile that meets the requirements
of the VM and place the VM on a datastore that provides these capabilities. If the VM is later migrated to a datastore
that is not suitable for the storage profile, or should the capabilities of the datastore change and no longer fit the
storage profile, the VM fails the storage profile compliance check. This compliance status can be seen on the individual
VM summary page, and on the VM storage profile for all VMs assigned to a storage profile. Storage Based Profile
Management with the PS Series VASA Provider enables administrators to place VMs on the right datastore and quickly
ensure that VMs continue to reside on a datastore that meet their needs.
Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (Storage DRS) uses the VMware CPU and memory resource management
concepts and applies them to datastores. Similar to the VMware traditional DRS capability, Storage DRS groups
datastores with like performance characteristics into a datastore cluster. When a VM is deployed, it is not deployed to
a particular datastore but rather to a datastore cluster. Storage DRS determines where to place the VM, based on space
utilization and I/O load. Like DRS, Storage DRS continuously monitors the cluster space utilization, and the I/O load
using storage I/O control. Should space utilization or I/O response time thresholds be exceeded, or if there is a
significant difference in space utilization among the datastores within the datastore cluster, Storage DRS seeks to
relocate a VM using Storage vMotion®.
However, while Storage DRS is aware of the datastores (and volumes) involved, it is not aware of the volume location in
the PS Series storage. Therefore, prior to initiating a Storage vMotion action on a VM, Storage DRS consults with the PS