Administrator Guide

IP Change Action Required
NOTE: Failure to unregister the VASA Provider before making changes
in name lookup service results in initialization errors on vCenter for
certain services and causes VASA registration to fail.
Managing Storage Containers
A storage container is a pool of storage that is used in a VMware environment that supports VVols. Storage containers can be created
using the following methods:
• From the Storage view in the Navigation pane of Storage Manager, select Volumes. Use the Create Storage Container function to
create the storage container and specify its settings.
• From the Servers view in the Navigation pane of Storage Manager, select Servers. Use the Create Datastore function to create a
datastore of the type VVOL. When you create a datastore using this function, you can also create a new storage container to be
associated with the datastore, or map to an existing storage container to be associated with the datastore.
NOTE: This is the recommended method.
After a storage container has been created, you can use vCenter to create a datastore and map it (mount it) to the storage container. The
datastore can then be used to create VVol-based VMs.
Details about storage containers and VVols are shown in the Summary tab when you select the Severs node.
How Storage Container Options Affect vCenter Advertised
Capabilities
Creating a storage container includes specifying options such as the use of compression, deduplication, encryption, snapshots and Storage
Center Storage Profiles. These options are advertised as capabilities to vCenter. The following VASA version 2.0 system storage
capabilities are supported by Storage Manager, and are shown on the vCenter Summary tab under Capability Sets and in Default
Profiles in vCenter for individual datastores.
• compression
• dedupe
• encryption
• snapshotCapable
• SCstorageProfile
NOTE: These capabilities apply only to VVol datastores. They do not apply to legacy VMFS datastores.
A VMware administrator can use storage capabilities to create VM Storage Policies in vCenter.
Related tasks
Create a Datastore and Map it to VMware ESX Server
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 Profile 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
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Managing Virtual Volumes With Storage Manager