Administrator Guide

The VVol framework introduces these components:
• VASA provider — A VASA provider (VP) is a software component that acts as a storage awareness service for vSphere. Storage
vendors develop VASA providers to work with their specic storage arrays.
• Protocol endpoint (PE) — A protocol endpoint is the connection used for VVol storage, and the means by which you can access VVol
storage containers. The protocol endpoint is also where access controls are placed and initiators are queried to ensure that they are
permitted access to the storage containers and virtual volumes. Protocol endpoints are created and presented by Storage Manager
when a VMware ESXi 6.0 server type is created in Storage Manager.
vSphere recognizes them as protocol endpoints after the VASA provider is registered and a Storage Container is created using Storage
Manager.
• Storage container — A storage container is a quantity of storage made available for the placement of virtual volumes-based VMs. Each
array has at least one storage container. Each storage container has one or more protocol endpoints associated with it.
NOTE
: Storage containers are not supported outside of the virtual volumes context.
You must use Storage Manager (connected toData Collector Manager) a to create storage containers.
Setting Up VVols Operations on Storage Manager
To set up and run operations for virtual volumes (VVols) in Storage Manager, you must:
• Register VMware vCenter Server in Storage Manager.
• Register VMware vCenter Server in Storage Center either by using Auto manage Storage Center option in Storage Manager or by
manually adding vCenter server in Storage Center.
• Register the VASA provider on a vCenter server
• Create storage containers that are used to store the VVols objects created by the vCenter administrator
• Use Storage Manager to create datastores of type VVOL, which are mapped to the storage containers on the array using Storage
Manager
• Use vCenter to create VVol-backed VMs
Managing Virtual Volumes With Storage Manager
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