Administrator Guide

About Protocol Endpoints
A protocol endpoint is the iSCSI target used for VVol storage, and the mean by which to access VVol storage containers. In order to
perform VVol user operations from within vCenter, protocol endpoint access rules need to be established.
NOTE: Conguring a protocol endpoint requires establishing one or more access policies. Dell requires the use of Virtual
Storage Manager (VSM) to establish Protocol Endpoint (PE) access rules.
To view all access policies dened for a group:
1. Click the Group tab.
2. Click Group Conguration → Acess Policies.
Group Manager displays a table of all access policies.
By selecting an access policy in this table, you can view the associations for that policy, whether that association is ”protocol
endpoint” or a “legacy.”
See About Access Policies.
About Storage Containers
A storage container is a quantity of storage made available for the placement of virtual volumes (VVols). The VVol architecture
denes a storage subsystem consisting of a VASA Provider (VP) and some storage devices. The VP acts as the control plane
intermediary between the VMware ESX virtual machine server platform and/or the VMware vCenter management platform and the
storage devices, which equates to one or more PS Array groups.
NOTE: Storage containers cannot be used to hold standard EqualLogic volumes, snapshots, or NAS containers. Storage
containers are not supported outside of the virtual volumes context.
In the virtual volume architecture, all physical and logical storage in the storage container is treated equally. Within a storage
container, all types of VVols consume storage from a single, undivided free pool. VVols and their derivatives (snapshots, clones) all
draw from the container’s space in equal terms, and their full logical size is debited from the container’s logical free space when
created.
While users can manage the amount of physical space, no restrictions apply as to how the physical space is used within the
container. Snapshots, clones, and VVols share the space on a rst-come, rst-served basis.
Storage Container Limitations
• No specic limit applies to the number of VVols in a single storage container; however, the number is limited by the space the
VVols consume and the physical and logical storage size of the storage container.
• A storage container’s physical size is limited only by the size of its parent pool.
• Storage container names must be between 2 and 42 alphanumeric Unicode characters. They must begin with a letter, and can
contain semicolon, period, and hyphen characters.
NOTE: While storage container names are case sensitive in terms of display format, two containers cannot have
names that dier only by case. For example, if a storage container name “VvolSC” exists, new containers named
“vvolsc” or “vvolSc” cannot be created.
• A storage container is located on each member of its parent pool.
• Deleting a pool with an existing storage container is supported. Merging two pools with existing storage containers is supported.
Moving a storage container to a dierent pool is not supported.
• Storage containers cannot be explicitly moved between pools. If two pools are merged via either the “pool merge” or “pool
delete” operation, any Storage containers that draw from the deleted or merged pool will be automatically reassigned to the
default or the merged-to pool respectively.
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VMware Group Access Panel