VMware vSphere 8 was recently introduced, and I wanted to highlight several new enhanced features that you will find in this release related to core storage.
NVMe-oF Enhancements
The first core feature I wanted to highlight in vSphere 8 is enhancements around NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF). NVME-oF continues to gain popularity for its high performance and throughput over traditional SCSI and NFS (Network File System) connectivity. Additionally, many storage partners are also moving to NVMe arrays. Thus, we are continually adding features and enhancements. The enhancements made in vSphere 8 around NVMe-oF are the following:
- We increased the number of supported namespaces and paths for both NVMe-TCP and NVMe-FC. Now support 256 namespace and 2K paths with NVMe-TCP and NVMe-FC.
- Extend reservation support for NVMe devices for customers using Microsoft WSFC support for application-level disk locking. This allows customers to use Clustered VMDK capability for use with Microsoft WSFC with NVMe-oF Datastores. Please note initially FC only.
- Advanced NVME-oF Discovery Services support in ESXi to help customers with NVMe-oF setup in an Ethernet environment. We have added support for NVMe Advance Discovery. This enables vSphere to query the network for supported NVMe array controllers simplifying the setup.
Container Storage Enhancements – Cloud Native Storage
The second core storage feature I wanted to highlight in vSphere 8 is VMFS provisioning storage policy for cloud-native storage. Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) allows for provisioning rules for volume creation and supports SPBM compliance checks.
NFS Resiliency Enhancements
An additional core storage feature to highlight in vSphere 8 is NFS resiliency improvements. In vSphere 8, we have added NFS enhancements increasing resilience through services, checks, and permission validations such as retry NFS mounts on failures and NFS mount validations.
vVols Enhancements
Lastly, with vSphere 8 core storage, we announced NVMe-oF support for vVols along with other features and enhancements which you can learn more about in What’s New with vVols in vSphere 8.
To Learn More:
For more details on vSphere 8 Core Storage, see the full article: What’s New in vSphere Core Storage and vVols
vSphere 8.0 Announcement blog – Introducing vSphere 8: The Enterprise Workload Platform
Take a Technical Deep Dive at vSphere Storage
Missed VMware Explore US? Check out the VMware Explore 2022 Wrap Up on vVols and Core Storage
