back to article Two years in the making: Sneak peek at VMware's future VVOL tech

VMware says its virtual volume storage technology – which has spent two years in development – is set to erupt onto the storage array landscape next year, causing profound changes for array controllers. Virtual volumes or VVOLs provide storage for VMware virtual machines (VMs) that currently need LUN (Logical Unit Number) or …

  1. JohnMartin

    -Disclosure NetApp Employee-

    I'm a little disappointed that NetApp didn't get a mention in the article, given that based on the information I have available to me, our customers are arguably better prepared for vVols than any of the vendors listed above. (it's a little hard to be specific without breaking NDA). As an indication of this, it's worth noting that unless something has changed recently, we're the only vendor offering an open beta for vVol functionality with the latest version of ONTAP.

    We posted a 3 part intro to Virtual Volumes on youtube for VMworld last year. We are planning to created updated videos based on the latest builds.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLNwLEf9JQM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN8JC8p3-wU

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nLRIHbCjcU

    Regards

    John Martin

    Principal Technologist - NetApp ANZ.

  2. Nate Amsden

    vmotion doesn't move storage now

    vmotion doesn't move any data on shared storage systems now. vvols won't change that.

  3. gps1539

    NetApp is also supporting the VVol Beta

    I'm also a NetApp Employee

    Following up on John's comment

    We are also fully supporting the VVol beta shipping versions of Clustered Data ONTAP (8.2.1) for NFS and SAN protocols. Just sign up for the vSphere Beta, then download NetApp VASA provider and you're good to go.

    BTW. None of the vendors listed in this article are supporting the Beta yet.

    regards

    Graham Smith

    Product Management, NetApp

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    not NFS

    Can't you do virtually all of this using NFS now, if you're not stuck on block protocols? Won't any additional vVol features also support NFS later?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: not NFS

      You can do some of this on NFS now but just like block NFS also has some of it's own shortcomings (sorry Netapp/Tintri). The introduction of VVols should remove any ease of management argument NFS had over block in the past, whilst retaining the granular advantages of block access. Hopefully this should free everyone from worrying about whether it's block or file and all the potential differences required in back end data management, because from a VMware perspective it should be totally transparent and equally flexible.

      1. JohnMartin

        Re: not NFS

        NFS is awesome for VMware, so is Block and vVols will ease the management distinctions between the two. Having said there are still devils in the details that will impact scalability, and I'm more than half expecting many customers existing/traditional block arrays will start choking when they have to manage thousands of luns, or even tens of thousands of LUNs that large Vmware vVol environments will generate.

        Even after vVols are out, there will be some subtle advantages to both NFS and Block based approaches, Nice thing is that NetApp customers will be able to choose, or even do both. In the long term though I suspect that SMB3 and pNFS and direct object based approaches the bypass both block and file based approaches will win.

        Networked block storage has pretty much reached the end of its development life-cycle.

  5. HPStorageGuy

    HP is a preferred design partner

    Disclosurer: I'm an HP Storage employee (better known as @HPStorageGuy)

    To follow on to John's comment, HP is also supporting the beta and in fact HP 3PAR is the FC reference platform for VMware vVols. In the vVols demo video battles, I also have a video I did: http://youtu.be/KKVui0W3NT0.

    I'm disappointed mine wasn't included because it has 6X more views than John's and more views than Chad's. LOL!

  6. gps1539

    NetApp is also a preferred design reference partner

    Following up on @HPStorageGuy, comments

    NetApp is the NFS reference partner for VVols, (we fully support VVol with FCP and iSCSI as well).

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: NetApp is also a preferred design reference partner

      Full-disclosure: gps1539 works for NetApp.

      C.

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