vVols for vCenter

Abiquo 6.1.2 introduces support for vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) with vCenter. VMware uses vVols to integrate different virtual storage providers to create datastores in vCenter.

Abiquo has tested vVols on NetApp and EMC virtual storage. Abiquo uses the default VMware storage profile for datastores and vVols.

Abiquo supports vVols in the same way as it supports regular datastores, with the same kind of datastore folder mark, and regular checks of datastore usage.

As for any other datastore when using vCenter clusters as hosts, the vVol datastores should be available on all the hosts of the cluster.

The use of vVols should be transparent to Abiquo users. Abiquo supports the current formats and allocations with vVols (including flat and stream optimized, with thick and thin allocation). Users can add disks on both types of datastore to the same VM. And the Abiquo user will be able to resize disks on vVols when they are attached to SCSI or SATA controllers. And the user can save a copy of the VM disk as an instance template in the Abiquo Catalogue.