Administrator Guide

Data Reduction Options for VVols
You can specify data reduction options when creating storage containers. These options are advertised (made available) to the VMware
administrator during VM Storage Prole creation.
When you use Storage Manager to create storage containers, you can optionally set these data reduction options:
• Deduplication Allowed
• Compression Allowed
Specifying one or both of these options indicates the data reduction preferences for VMs that are then created.
You can also specify options for Data Reduction Input:
• None
• Compression
• Deduplication with Compression
These options are presented as checkboxes on the Create Storage Container wizard.
NOTE: Even if the Compression Allowed and Deduplication Allowed checkboxes are selected, selecting the None prole option
results in no action being taken.
You can also select the Default Data Reduction Prole, if one has been specied using the User Preferences.
After a storage administrator creates a storage container with data reduction options specied, these options are advertised (shown as
being selected) on the VM Storage Prole wizard when a VMware administrator creates a storage prole. If you edit the storage
container’s Data Reduction option, you also change the advertised capabilities that are visible in the VM Storage Prole.
For information about using VM Storage Proles, see the VMware vCenter documentation.
Factors That Aect Data Reduction Operation
When a new virtual volume is created, it can use any Data Reduction type supported by the storage container. The preference for the Data
Reduction type on the virtual volume is inuenced by either:
• The VM Storage Prole, if one is established and used
• The default Data Reduction Prole set for the storage center
The following factors aect how Data Reduction options are applied:
• If no VM Storage Policy is chosen, the Data Reduction type defaults to the value selected by the Default Data Reduction Prole.
• Editing an existing storage container’s properties to change the value of the Default Data Reduction Prole does not aect existing
virtual volumes. This change applies only to new volumes created afterward.
• If an existing volume has an enabled feature that is now disabled, the volume itself does not change. In the VM Storage Prole, the
volume would now appear to be noncompliant. To bring the volume back into compliance, you can apply a compliant policy to the
volume.
NOTE
: The VM Storage Prole takes precedence when compatible storage exists.
NOTE: VM storage policies are applied only to data and cong VVols and not to memory and swap VVols.
NOTE: When modifying VM storage policies especially for compression and deduplication, apply the VMware administrator
policies to all volumes associated with VM. If these same changes are not applied to all volumes, some portion of the VM could
be compressed while other portions could be uncompressed.
192 Managing Virtual Volumes With Storage Manager