Administrator Guide
• Unisphere Central must be installed on a separate management cluster.
• VVols is supported with the iSCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces only. FCoE and front end SAS are not supported for VVols.
• The network card must support the Secondary LUNID feature. For more information, search for I/O Devices with the Secondary LUNID
in the VMware Compatibility Guide, available from http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php.
Safeguarding VVols Data
A critical component of the total VVols solution is VVols the VM metadata.VMware's ESXi reads and writes this metadata on a per-VVol
basis during control plane operations, such as power-on, power-o, and snapshots.
The Data Collector stores the VVols metadata written by the VASA provider in a database.
During Data Collector deployment time (installation or migration) and during VASA provider registration, the production user is reminded to
use an external database.
Use of the internal database is a consideration for lab deployments only. Depending upon the protection model used in deployment, failure
to use the external database could result in the loss of some or all VVols metadata when the Data Collector is uninstalled or deleted. Use of
the external database negates this risk during uninstall or delete.
The external database is expected to be deployed in a highly available manner including redundant switching connectivity.
Lab Experimentation Use of VVols
In a preproduction lab environment, it is conceivable that a user may experiment with VVols and choose to purge all data on the array and
restart with the intention of redeploying another VVols lab environment for experimentation purposes.
The proper steps for purging data in a LAB environment only are:
1 Using VMware vCenter — Delete all respective VVols VMs
2 Using Storage Center—Perform Purge
In the event the order is reversed (by accident), VVols metadata remains in the database even if the Data Collector is uninstalled. This
metadata must be deleted to ensure a robust operating environment if a new lab environment is to be set up and intended to use VVols.
Failure to do so results in failures to some VVols VM operations to reference incorrect metadata.
If the order is reversed, contact technical support to work through the purge process.
VMware Virtual Volume Concepts
The following gure shows the virtual volumes (VVols) model dened by VMware.
Storage Center Administration
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