7.0

Table Of Contents
For more information about Virtual SAN requirements, see "Working with Virtual SAN" in the vSphere 5.5
Update 1 Storage document. For vSphere 6 or later, see the Administering VMware Virtual SAN document. For
guidance on sizing and designing the key components of View virtual desktop infrastructures for VMware
Virtual SAN, see the white paper at
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsan/VMW-TMD-Virt-SAN-Dsn-Szing-Guid-Horizon-
View.pdf.
Using Virtual Volumes for Virtual-Machine-Centric Storage and Policy-Based
Management
With Virtual Volumes (VVols), available with vSphere 6.0 or a later release, an individual virtual machine,
not the datastore, becomes a unit of storage management. The storage hardware gains control over virtual
disk content, layout, and management.
With Virtual Volumes, abstract storage containers replace traditional storage volumes based on LUNs or
NFS shares. Virtual Volumes maps virtual disks and their derivatives, clones, snapshots, and replicas,
directly to objects, called virtual volumes, on a storage system. This mapping allows vSphere to offload
intensive storage operations such as snapshoting, cloning, and replication to the storage system. The result,
for example, is that a cloning operation that previously took an hour might now take just a few minutes
using Virtual Volumes.
IMPORTANT Although one of the key benefits of Virtual Volumes is the ability to use Software Policy-Based
Management (SPBM), for this release of View, no default granular storage policies are created by View, as
they are when you use the Virtual SAN feature. Instead, you can set a global default storage policy in
vCenter Server that will apply to all Virtual Volume datastores.
Virtual Volumes has the following benefits:
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Virtual Volumes supports offloading a number of operations to storage hardware. These operations
include snapshotting, cloning, and Storage DRS.
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With Virtual Volumes, you can use advanced storage services that include replication, encryption,
deduplication, and compression on individual virtual disks.
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Virtual Volumes supports such vSphere features as vMotion, Storage vMotion, snapshots, linked
clones, Flash Read Cache, and DRS.
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You can use Virtual Volumes with storage arrays that support vSphere APIs for Array Integration
(VAAI).
Requirements and Limitations
The Virtual Volumes feature has the following limitations when used in a View deployment:
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This release does not support using the View space-efficient disk format feature, which reclaims disk
space by wiping and shrinking disks.
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Virtual Volumes does not support using View Composer Array Integration (VAAI).
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Virtual Volumes datastores are not compatible with Virtual SAN datastores for this release.
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Virtual Volumes datastores are not supported for instant clone desktop pools.
NOTE Virtual Volumes is compatible with the View Storage Accelerator feature. Virtual SAN provides a
caching layer on SSD disks, and the View Storage Accelerator feature provides a content-based cache that
reduces IOPS and improves performance during boot storms.
The Virtual Volumes feature has the following requirements:
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vSphere 6.0 or a later release.
View Architecture Planning
40 VMware, Inc.