After almost two years of teasing the audience we finally can start getting a grip on VMware VVols. Why so long you ask? If you ask VMware they’ll probably point you at how slow the vendors are and if you ask the vendors they’ll probably tell you VMware is not the fastest in providing finished API’s 🙂

Nevertheless it’s a very interesting next step in handling virtual storage. Finally we will no longer have the need for buckets of storage (datastores) where we will dump a pack of VMDKs in. No, finally we are going to treat every ESX file as a storage object in itself. That’s true VM-centric storage management. I can’t help it to give kudo’s here to Tintri whom have lead the way all that time in production! Others have followed their example, VVols will bring make it a standard.

This blogpost will be my landing page for all info on VVols. I will specifically focus on all the arrays that will have a different type of readiness/supported/… status. A second thing I want to make sure is that VVols is not just a checkbox! We’ve seen this with VAAI where there are several primitives of which you only needed to comply with one to be able to check the box. I will make those distinctions if necessary.

TO ALL: if you work for a vendor that is planning to support VVOLS, please get in touch if I haven’t yet. If you are a reader and you find an interesting link I have missed > send it over. 

Checkbox Solutions

Vendor Details

VMworld VVol specific Sessions

• STO1963 – Virtual Volumes Business Overview – Juan Novella (VMware) & Suzy Visvanathan (VMware)
• STO1965 – Virtual Volumes Technical Deep Dive – Rawlinson Rivera (VMware) & Suzy Visvanathan (VMware)
• STO2752 – Deploying VMware VVol with Hitachi Data Systems – Paul Morrissey (HDS) & Suzy Visvanathan (VMware)
• STO2142-SPO – Hypervisor &Storage QoS; two great tastes that taste great together – Rawlinson Rivera (VMware) & Tyler Hannan (SolidFire)
• STO3162 – Software Defined Storage: Satisfy the Requirements of Your Application at the Granularity of a Virtual Disk with Virtual Volumes (VVols) – Rochna Dhand (NimbleStorage) & Cormac Hogan (VMware)
• STO3163 – Virtual Volumes and Scalable Data Protection in a Software Defined Enterprise – Amit Sinha (Symantec) & Suzy Visvanathan (VMware)
• STO3161 – What Can Virtual Volumes Do For You? – Matt Cowger (EMC) & Suzy Visvanathan (VMware)
• STO2554-SPO – Zooming In: How VMware Virtual Volumes (vVols) Will Provide Shared Storage with X-ray Vision – Aboubacar Diare (HP) & Patrick Dirks (VMware)
• STO3247 – VMware VVOL Technical Preview with DELL storage – David Glynn (DELL) & Rawlinson Rivera (VMware)
• SPL-PRT-1467 – (HandsOnLab) Virtual Volume Technical Preview with DELL EqualLogic – David Glynn (DELL)

External Blog Links

VMware

• Virtual Volumes Public Beta (Rawlinson Rivera) – LINK (June 2014)

Duncan Epping

• Virtual Volumes vendor demos – LINK (May 2014)
• VMware Storage APIs for VM and Application Granular Data Management – LINK (Aug 2012)

Cormac Hogan

• Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) Tech Preview [with video] – LINK (Oct 2012)

The Register

• The triumph of VVOL: Everyone’s jumping into bed with VMware – LINK (July 2014)
• VVOL Update: Are any vendors NOT leaping into bed with VMware? – LINK (July 2014)