The Virtual Volumes functionality helps to improve granularity. It helps you to differentiate virtual machine services on a per application level by offering a new approach to storage management. Rather than arranging storage around features of a storage system,

Virtual Volumes

arrange storage around the needs of individual virtual machines, making storage virtual machine centric. 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 snapshot, cloning, and replication to the storage system.

A

Virtual Volumes

storage provider, also called a VASA provider, is a software component that acts as a storage awareness service for vSphere. The provider mediates out-of-band communication between

vCenter Server

and

ESXi

hosts on one side and a storage system on the other. The storage provider is implemented through VMware APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) and is used to manage all aspects of

Virtual Volumes

storage. The storage provider integrates with the Storage Monitoring Service (SMS), included in vSphere, to communicate with

vCenter Server

and

ESXi

hosts. The storage provider delivers information from the underlying storage container. The storage container capabilities appear in

vCenter Server

and the

vSphere Client

. Then, in turn, the storage provider communicates virtual machine storage requirements, which you can define in the form of a storage policy, to the storage layer. This integration process ensures that a virtual volume created in the storage layer meets the requirements outlined in the policy.

Site Recovery Manager

supports VASA 3.0 and later.