ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere 9.13

Provision vVols datastores

You can provision a vVols datastore using the Provision Datastore wizard only if VASA Provider is enabled in your ONTAP tools.

What you will need

You should ensure that the subnet details of all the networks to which the ESXi hosted is connected is entered in the Kaminoprefs.xml.

See Enabling datastore mounting across different subnets section.
You should configure similar replication policy and schedule on the datastores at both the source and target sites for reverse replication to be successful.

The Provision datastore menu enables you to specify a storage capability profile for the datastore, which helps in specifying consistent service level objectives (SLOs) and simplifies the provisioning process. You can specify a storage capability profile only if you have enabled VASA Provider.

FlexVol volumes that are used as backing storage are displayed on the vVols dashboard only if they are running ONTAP 9.7 or later. You should not use the vCenter Server New Datastore wizard to provision vVols datastores.

You must use cluster credentials to create vVols datastores.

You cannot use SVM credentials to create vVols datastores.
VASA Provider does not support the cloning of a virtual machine that is hosted on the vVols datastore of one protocol to another datastore with a different protocol.
You should have completed cluster pairing and SVM pairing both on the source and destination sites.

About this task

The 9.10 release of ONTAP tools supports creating vVols datastores with vmdk size greater than 16TB for All SAN Array (ASA) type ONTAP 9.9.1 or later storage platforms.

Steps

From the vSphere Client home page, click Hosts and Clusters.
In the navigation pane, select the datacenter on which you want to provision the datastore.

Specify the hosts on which you want to mount the datastore.

To make the datastore available to…

Do this…

All of the hosts in a datacenter

Right-click a datacenter, and then select ONTAP tools > Provision Datastore.

All of the hosts in a cluster

Right-click a cluster, and then select ONTAP tools > Provision Datastore.

A single host

Right-click a host, and then select ONTAP tools > Provision Datastore.

Complete the fields in the New Datastore dialog box to create the datastore.

Most of the fields in the dialog box are self-explanatory. The following table describes some of the fields for which you might require guidance.

Section

Description

General

The General section of the New Datastore dialog box provides options to enter the location, name, description, type, and protocol for the new datastore. The vVols datastore type is used to configure a vVols datastore.

You can provision the vVols datastore if VASA provider capability is enabled. See, Enable VASA Provider for configuring virtual datastores for details. The vVols datastore supports NFS, iSCSI, FC/FEoE, and NVMe/FC protocols.

NVMe/FC protocol for vVols datastore is available if ONTAP tools is registered with vCenter 8.0 and later, and if the ONTAP version is ONTAP 9.91P3 and later.

If you are provisioning iSCSI vVols datastore for vVols replication, then before creating vVols datastore at the target site, you need to perform SnapMirror update and cluster rediscovery.

Storage system

This section enables you to select whether you want the vVols datastore to have either replication enabled or disabled. Only asynchronous type replication profile is allowed for this release. You can then select one or more storage capability profiles listed. The system recommended values of paired Storage system and Storage VM are populated automatically. The recommended values are populated only if they are paired in ONTAP. You can modify these values if required.

Note: While creating FlexVol volumes in ONTAP, you should ensure to create them with the attributes you wish to select in the storage capability profile. Both read write and data protection FlexVol volumes should have similar attributes.

After FlexVol volumes are created and SnapMirror is initialized in ONTAP, you should run a storage rediscovery in ONTAP tools to be able to see the new volumes.

Storage attributes

You should select the schedule for SnapMirror and the required FlexVol volume from the existing list. This schedule should be similar to the one selected in the VM Storage Policies page. The user should have created FlexVol volumes on ONTAP with SnapMirror that are listed. You can select the default storage capability profile to be used for creating vVols using the Default storage capability profile option. By default all the volumes are set to maximum Autogrow size to 120 % and default Snapshots are enabled on these volumes.

Note:

A FlexVol volume that is part of a vVols datastore cannot shrink below the existing size but can grow by 120% maximum. Default snapshots are enabled on this FlexVol volume.
The minimum size of FlexVol volume that you should create is 5GB.

In the Summary section, click Finish.

Result

A Replication group is created in the backend when a vVols datastore is configured.

Related information

Analyze performance data using the vVols dashboard