Administrator Guide

Thick provisioning is not supported for operations such as creating or cloning a VVol VM. Only thin provisioning is supported.
VASA Provider
The VASA provider enables support for VMware VVols operations.
A VASA provider is a software interface between the vSphere vCenter server and vendor storage arrays. Dell provides its own VASA
provider that enables vCenter to work with Dell storage. This VASA provider supports the VMware VASA 2.0 API specications.
When the VASA provider is registered, vCenter can be used to create and manage VVols on the Storage Center.
You must congure the VASA provider if you intend to use VVols in your environment.
VASA Provider Restrictions
The following restrictions apply to the VASA provider:
• Storage Manager can have VASA provider registered to only one vCenter.
• All ESXi and vCenter requests to the VASA provider are mapped to a single Storage Manager user.
Register the VASA Provider
You can register the VASA provider on a vCenter server, and manage it from the Servers view of Storage Center.
Register the VASA provider using either of these methods
• When initially registering a vCenter Server in the Storage Manager client, select the Register VASA Provider option.
• For a vCenter Server that is already registered, select Edit Settings and then select the Register VASA Provider option.
Related link
Register a VMware vCenter Server
Unregister a VASA Provider
Unregister a VASA provider to remove it from vCenter.
Prerequisite
CAUTION: The VASA provider must be unregistered before you to initiate any of these tasks:
• Any action related to uninstallation, migration, upgrade, reinstalling of Storage Manager on same host with same IP address
• Uninstalling Storage Manager with the intention of reinstalling on another host
• Changing the Storage Manager FQDN
• Changing the Storage Manager IP address
Unregistering VASA will aects control plane operations on virtual volume VMs and datastores which are in use. It does not
aect data transfer between an ESXi host and the respective SAN storage.
Unregistering the VASA provider results in powered-o VVol VMs being shown as inaccessible and datastores as inactive. To
avoid prolonged control plane down time, minimize the period where the VASA provider remains unregistered. After re-
reregistration, there could be a delay for powered-o VMs and datastores to recover from being inaccessible and inactive
respectively.
Steps
1. Click the Servers view.
2. Select the Servers folder in the Servers pane.
3. Right-click the icon for the vCenter Server, and select Edit Settings.
The Edit VMware vCenter Server Settings dialog box opens.
4. Click Unregister VASA Provider.
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Managing Virtual Volumes With Storage Manager