|
Name/Concept |
Explanation |
|---|---|
|
Protocol Endpoint (PE) |
A PE is a volume of zero capacity with a special setting in its Vital Product Data (VPD) page that ESXi detects during a SCSI inquiry. It effectively serves as a mount point for vVols. It is the only FlashArray volume that must be manually connected to hosts to use vVols. This industry term for a PE is "Administrative Logical Unit". |
|
VASA |
vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) is the VMware-designed API used to communicate between vSphere and the underlying storage. |
|
Management Path Control Path |
This is the TCP/IP path between the compute management layer (vSphere) and the storage management layer (FlashArray). Instructions to create, delete and otherwise manage storage is issued on this path. |
|
Data Path/Plane |
The Data Path is the established connection from the ESXi hosts to the Protocol Endpoint on the FlashArray. This connection is established over the storage fabric. Today this means iSCSI or Fibre Channel. |
|
SPBM |
Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) is a framework designed by VMware to provision and/or manage storage. Users can create policies of selected capabilities or tags and assign them to a VM or specific virtual disk. SPBM for internal storage is called vSAN, SPBM for external storage is called vVols. A vendor must support VASA to enable SPBM for their storage. |
|
VASA Provider Storage Provider |
A VASA provider (sometimes called a storage provider) is an instance of the VASA service that a storage vendor offers that a customer has deployed. For the FlashArray these are built-in to the FlashArray controllers--one in each. |
|
Virtual Volume (vVol) |
Virtual Volumes is the name for this full architecture. A specific vVol is any volume on the array that is in use by the VMware environment and managed by the VASA provider. A vVol based volume is not fundamentally different than any other volume on the FlashArray--the main distinction is that when it is in use, it is attached as a sub-lun via a PE, instead of via a direct lun. |
|
vVol Datastore vVol Storage Container |
The vVol Datastore is not a LUN, file system or volume. A vVol Datastore is a target provisioning object that represents a FlashArray, a quota for capacity, and a logical collection of config vVols. |