VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes for SolidFire Storage ...

1 Technical Report VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes for SolidFire Storage Configuration Guide Aaron Patten and Andy Banta, NetApp October 2017 | TR-4642. TABLE OF CONTENTS. 1 Introduction .. 4. Related Documents ..4. 2 Virtual Volume Use Cases .. 4. 3 Benefits of VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes on SolidFire Storage .. 5. 4 Getting Started with vSphere Virtual Volumes .. 6. Enable vSphere Virtual Volumes ..7. Register the SolidFire VASA Provider ..8. Install the NetApp SolidFire vCenter Plug-In ..10. Create a Storage Container and Discover a Virtual Volumes Datastore ..13. 5 SPBM Policies and vSphere Tags.

2 15. Configure vSphere Tags ..16. Apply Tags to VVol Datastores ..18. Create SPBM Policy ..19. Apply Policies to Virtual Machine Templates ..21. Deploy Virtual Machines ..23. 6 Snapshots .. 24. Create a Virtual Machine Snapshot ..25. Revert to a Virtual Machine Snapshot ..26. Appendix A: VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration .. 28. Fundamental VAAI Operations .. 28. Appendix B: Virtual Volume Object Types .. 28. Appendix C: Glossary .. 29. Appendix D: Create a Storage Container Through the SolidFire UI and Discover It Through vCenter .. 30. Create a Storage Container.

3 30. Create a Virtual Volume Datastore ..31. Where to Find Additional Information .. 32. Version History .. 32. LIST OF TABLES. Table 1) Related documents..4. Table 2) Benefits of Virtual Volumes ..5. Table 3) Business unit organization..15. 2 VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes for SolidFire 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. Configuration Guide Table 4) Memory snapshots..25. Table 5) Quiesced snapshots..25. LIST OF FIGURES. Figure 1) Virtual Volume implementation on SolidFire ..5. 3 VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes for SolidFire 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. Configuration Guide 1 Introduction This document addresses the configuration of the VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes (VVols) feature for use on NetApp SolidFire Storage systems.

4 Basic concepts about VVols and how they can be used on SolidFire Storage are also covered. See the glossary for VVol-related terminology. Note: This document assumes an intermediate level of knowledge of the VMware vSphere platform. Related Documents The documents listed in Table 1 provide essential additional information about the management and configuration of VVols for SolidFire and should be used to supplement the information provided in this configuration guide. Table 1) Related documents. Document Title Description NetApp SolidFire VMware vSphere for Element OS Describes how to configure and connect a VMware Configuration Guide vSphere host to a SolidFire iSCSI target.

5 It also provides best practices for design and implementation, including disk alignment procedures, network load balancing configuration, network failover, and performance control. SolidFire Element OS User Guide Describes how to use the SolidFire Element OS UI. for VVol-related Storage -side tasks. 2 Virtual Volume Use Cases vSphere Virtual Volumes are a Storage paradigm for VMware that moves much of the Storage management for vSphere from the Storage system to VMware vCenter. Instead of the vSphere administrator consuming LUNs assigned by a Storage administrator, they can now have a hands-on view of the available Storage resources.

6 They also have automatic control over how those resources are provisioned to Virtual workloads through VMware Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM). Starting in the vSphere release, the following workloads and target use cases are more favorable for Virtual Volumes implementation than others: General Virtual machine (VM) consolidation and a true mixed workload on one Storage system Database consolidation Cloud-based service offerings Use cases that require replication (not supported by VMware for Virtual Volumes ) or very high VM. density are not currently ideal for VVols deployments.

7 Virtual Volumes are a framework provided to Storage vendors for integration, and each vendor's implementation is different in terms of features and maturity. Storage vendors implement or adapt their features to work within this framework. For example, a snapshot of a VM running on VVols is different for a vendor that keeps data structures on disk in comparison to one that keeps metadata in memory. By extension, vendors can expose the value of their capabilities with VVols, allowing vSphere to consume them automatically with SPBM. For example, SolidFire exposes QoS profiles through the Virtual Machine API for Storage Awareness (VASA) provider, which can be used to provide a per Virtual disk level of guaranteed performance for the volume's minimum, maximum, and burst IOPS settings.

8 4 VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes for SolidFire 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. Configuration Guide Figure 1) Virtual Volume implementation on SolidFire . SolidFire Virtual Volumes Config VM Data Swap SolidFire Cluster Config Data VM. Data Swap VVol Storage Datastore Container Config Cluster Master Data VM VASA Provider Swap Memory Protocol Endpoint Element OS VVols This document is not intended to be a Virtual Volumes or SPBM tutorial. For an overview of SPBM and Virtual Volume features, see documentation from VMware . 3 Benefits of VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes on SolidFire Storage Deploying VMs in Virtual Volumes provides benefits to Virtual infrastructure administrators.

9 Table 2. compares some of the features of vSphere VVols with those of a traditional Virtual machine file system (VMFS). Table 2) Benefits of Virtual Volumes . Feature VVols VMFS Benefits of VVols Quality of Service (QoS) Per Virtual Per volume VM-level and VMDK-level performance machine disk control. No data movement is needed to (VMDK) change performance. Eliminates inter- VM contention. Deduplication Native format on VMDK files in Higher deduplication ratio delivers array VMFS higher effective capacity. UNMAP Automatic Semiautomatic* Space is returned to the Storage array when the guest OS deletes data or when a VM is deleted.

10 Snapshots Offload to array No offload Instant operation that is more space efficient with no data to copy. Also eliminates the performance degradation seen with VMware snapshots. Clones Offload to array Partial offload** Instant operation that is more space efficient with no data to copy. Volumes : VMware ESXi 64,000 256 Removes the traditional LUN limitation. 5 VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes for SolidFire 2017 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. Configuration Guide Feature VVols VMFS Benefits of VVols Datastore capacity Full array Limited by LUN Unlimited scale for datastores. capacity VMs per datastore No hard limit Maximum 2,048; Removes limits on the number of VMs <20 is typical per datastore by eliminating VMFS.