The triumph of VVOL: Everyone's jumping into bed with VMware A storage array access revolution is coming, says VMware as it releases its VVOL Virtual Volumes. These allow storage arrays to do a virtualised server's bidding and have storage pools and operations carried out in VMware virtual machine-centric ways. VMware has announced its beta programme for a forthcoming release of VMware …
VVOLs and VASA are important standards for communicating capabilities between array and management software. The key here is to combine easy with obvious. The last thing we need to have happen is that VVOLs make it even easier to make so many LUNs you completely forget when you're hitting the arbitrary LUN limit of your array.
How the information is presented in the UI and whether or nor provisioning procedures/scripts/orchestration/automation are reworked to take advantage not only of the new ease of use, but the new information on limits is going to determine viability within a given organization.
Trevor -- I believe that is what NetApp, Tintri, and other NAS-based virtualization storage companies are talking about. Others will most likely have to look at a sub-LUN mechanism to make VVOLs viable. For example -- I average 8 vDisks per VM. I'd like to have something that gives me the ability to storage 1000 VM fully loaded, so realistically my SAN should have the ability to handle 8000 VVOLs.
The vendors I spoke to when we did our last refresh all talked about engineering work being done on LUN limits. This is a very smart move on VMware's part. As an virt guy, I love it when I am not held hostage by my vendors (maybe VMware and MS is ok). Or maybe I should look at NAS option next time around.
Anonymous is partly correct, disk-based arrays will likely have to provide either map a VVOL to a file (NAS), LUN or sub-LUN (SAN options); however, all-flash arrays are truly object-based regardless of the form of protocol access. As such these vendors will have options available to them to provide VVOLs as actual storage objects accessed via SCSI or file command sets.
While we are a ways off from the GA of VVOLs version 1 - VVOLs offer a ton of promise for cloud infrastructures and storage management over the next few years.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
