Provisioning VVol datastores

You can use VASA Provider for ONTAP to create virtual volume (VVol) datastores. The Provision VVol Datastore wizard performs all of the necessary storage-side setup processes such as creating export policies, creating initiator groups, and mapping LUNs.

1. From the vSphere Web Client Home page, click Hosts and Clusters.
2. In the navigation pane, right-click the datacenter on which you want to provision the datastore, and then select VASA Provider for ONTAP > Provision VVol Datastore.
   You can choose to make the datastore available to all of the hosts in a datacenter, to all of the hosts in a cluster, or to a single host.
3. Complete the pages in the Provision VVol Datastore wizard to create the datastore.
   1. Name page:

      You should specify a name and protocol for the new VVol datastore. It is a good practice to enter a description for the new datastore and to select a protocol.

   2. Storage Capability Profile page:

      You should select the profiles that you want to be available to the VVol datastore when the storage is provisioned. You can select multiple profiles.

      Note

      You can create storage capability profiles from the VASA Provider GUI, which you can access from the VSC GUI.
   3. Storage System page:

      From the drop-down list, you should select the storage system and SVM on which the VVol datastore will be created.

      This Storage System list displays only the storage systems and SVMs that match the storage capability profiles that you specified on the previous screen.

      This page also includes a list of the storage systems that you cannot use and the errors that are associated with them.

   4. FlexVol Selection page

      If you want to use existing FlexVol volumes, you should select the FlexVol volumes that you want to use.

      Note

      • You can either use existing FlexVol volumes or create new FlexVol volumes; you cannot do both.
      • You must have a minimum of one FlexVol volume per Storage Capability Profile (SCP) of minimum size 4 GB for every VVol datastore that you create.
   5. Provision FlexVol page

      If you want to create a new FlexVol volume, you should click the Add button, and specify the information for the new FlexVol volume. The autogrow feature is enabled by default. All of the FlexVol volumes in a VVol datastore must be from the same SVM.

      After you create a FlexVol volume, you can edit the FlexVol volume by selecting the Modify button. You can also delete the FlexVol volume if required.

      Recommendation: When you are working with SAN VVol datastores, it is a good practice to store no more than 150 virtual machines on a single FlexVol volume, fewer when using VMware snapshots to protect them. A single virtual machine uses at least two VVols (Data and Config), and a third (Swap) when powered on. Each VMware snapshot that is offloaded to ONTAP creates another VVol. Every SAN VVol uses a separate LUN, with a limit of 512 LUNs per FlexVol volume in the 9.4 ONTAP releases. NFS VVol datastores do not have this constraint.

      Note

      You must not select the FlexVol volumes that are configured for traditional datastores.
   6. Default Profile page

      You should specify the storage capability profile that is used for virtual machines that do not specify a specific storage capability. This happens when the virtual machine is automatically provisioned for datastores. These include configuration VVols that are used by vSphere to hold configuration information, data VVols that contain operating system information and user files, and swap VVols.

   7. Ready to Complete page

      You should review the information that you have supplied for the VVol datastore. If the information is correct, you can proceed to the 4.

      If the information is incorrect, you should return to the appropriate page, and correct the information before proceeding to the 4.

4. Click Finish.
   The wizard creates the VVol datastore. You can track the status of the VVol datastore provisioning process by verifying the Lenovo datastore allocation task and the Lenovo Mount Datastores task in the Recent Tasks tab of vSphere Web Client.