In vSphere 5.5, this generally implies VMware Virtual SAN storage capabilities. A Storage Policy Server can also obtain capability data from a VASA provider that was implemented for the vSphere 5.0/5.1 environment.

The early architecture (vSphere 5.0/5.1) supports a simple expression of storage capability. A VASA 1.0 provider can advertise one system label per datastore. A system label has an associated description.

The Storage Policy Server performs a runtime conversion of VASA 1.0 system labels. The Storage Policy API presents the system label as a storage capability profile. The Server also generates a capability schema for the storage label. The generated storage capability profile references the generated schema.

The following figure shows the Storage Policy data objects that are generated from a vSphere 5.0/5.1 legacy profile.