Dell EMC Unity and VMware VVols – What’s all the fuss? Pt1

There’s been lots of talk about the wonders of VVols for a long time. They seemed to be a large amount of hope that they would be the panacea of all our Storage and Virtualization woes and be the vision going forward, at least for our  VMware environments.

The hype seems to have tapered off, but I was always sceptical and the overall interest in the community is high. However without actually using them I have, until now, reserved judgment.

So, we’re going to setup from start to finish, VVols, using a combination of;

• Dell EMC Unity 550f running OE 4.5
• VMware VCSA 6.5u2
• VMware ESXi 6.5u2

The first thing to make sure is that the VASA provider is registered. Most times, if you add a vCenter connection, it will be. In my case it was showing as unregistered.

To register it, i used a simple PowerCLI command, New-VasaProvider

Syntax is;

This processed in a second or so.

Check also on the array;

Next, create a Capability Profile. Choose a StoragePool and add a Usage Tag(s), Name, Description;

Finished

Next we’ll create the VVol DataStore; I’ll be using Block backed storage.

Complete the Name and Description fields

 Choose the previously created Capability Profile and a size;

I’m just going to test this on one host.

 Review the Summary and Finish.

Did it work ? Check on the vCenter storage Properties;

 And then back on the Array;

Groovy, easy. In the next Part, we’ll setup a VM on the VVol.
Stay tuned!