VMware’s Software-Defined Storage (SDS) partner ecosystem plays an instrumental role in delivering unique and integrated solutions to our customers. Today, VMware is strengthening the SDS ecosystem by enabling our partners to provide software data services through the new vSphere APIs for IO Filtering (VAIO). VMware’s SDS vision is to deliver a new, efficient data center operational model that is application-centric rather than infrastructure-centric. With the introduction of VAIO and through the collaboration with our partners, this vision is further advanced.
VAIO will enable customers to seamlessly integrate 3rd party data services in vSphere. The key benefits of software data services through VAIO are:
- Finer Control: Data service operations can be executed at VM granularity rather than at LUN/Volume level. Each VM will get precisely the necessary data services.
- Policy management through SPBM integration: Policies can be created and managed the hypervisor level using SPBM. These policies can combine software-based data services provided by VAIO with native capabilities provided by Virtual SAN or VVol-enabled storage arrays.
- Storage Agnostic: VAIO enables 3rd party software-based data services that are agnostic of the storage implementation. VAIO can run on Virtual SAN, Virtual Volumes enabled storage and traditional storage devices (VMFS and NFS).
Partner solutions
The VAIO program currently consists of 10 partners, with at least 6 partners working to deliver solutions before or during Q1 2016. Initial use cases include caching and replication.
For more on VAIO, you may attend the following VMworld sessions:
- STO6069 – Partner Solutions for Virtualized Data Services
- STO5704 – Using Virtual Data Services for IO Acceleration in vSphere
- STO5571 – What’s New in Virtual Volumes
Additionally, be sure to visit the above partners at VMworld for demos and further details on their unique solutions.
