Since the official release of vSphere 6.0, Virtual Volumes (vVols) has generated a great deal of interest with customers, field consultants, and the VMware community. Now that vVols is available customers can begin testing functionality and capabilities. There have been many questions about what VMware products and vSphere features are compatible and currently interoperate with vVols.
Because VMware’s product portfolio continues to expand exponentially, identifying all of the new products and features that interoperate with vVols can be a tedious and potentially time-consuming task. In the interest of time and efficiency, the need for a centralized Virtual Volumes interoperability guide is eminent, so here is one.
Below is a list of VMware products and vSphere 6.0 features that as of today March 30th, 2015 are supported and interoperate with vVols. Please keep in mind that the interoperability and supportability of any of these products and features can change with a future patch or product release. It is highly recommended to check the VMware compatibility matrix guide for the official and up to date list of products and features that are interoperable with vVols.
Virtual Volumes (vVols) Supported and Interoperable Products and Features
VMware Products
- VMware vSphere 6.0.
- VMware vRealize Automation 6.2.
- VMware Horizon 6.1.
- VMware vSphere Replication 6.0
VMware vSphere 6.0 Features
- Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM)
- Thin Provisioning
- Linked Clones
- Native Snapshots
- View Storage Accelerator also known as Content Based Read Cache (CBRC)
- Storage vMotion
- vSphere Flash Read Cache
- Virtual SAN (VSAN)
- vSphere Auto Deploy
- High Availability (HA)
- vMotion
- xvMotion
- vSphere Software Development Kit (SDK)
- NFS version 3.x
Virtual Volumes (vVols) Not Supported and Interoperable Products and Features
VMware Products
- VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.x
- VMware vCloud Air
- VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.x to 6.x
- VMware vSphere Data Protection 5.x to 6.x
- VMware Data Recovery 2.x
- VMware vCloud Director 5.x
- VMware NSX for vSphere 6.x
VMware vSphere 6.0 Features
- Storage I/O Control
- NFS version 4.1
- IPv6
- Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS)
- Fault Tolerance (FT)
- SMP-FT
- vSphere API for I/O Filtering (VAIO)
- Array-based replication
- Raw Device Mapping (RDM)
- Microsoft Failover Clustering (MSCS)
The Knowledge Base article 2112039 can be use to track the official VMware products and vSphere feature interoperability.
– Enjoy
For future updates on Virtual SAN (VSAN), vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) and other Software-defined Storage technologies as well as vSphere + OpenStack be sure to follow me on Twitter: @PunchingClouds
