VMware finally released the list of supported and non-supported vSphere features and VMware products with their new Virtual Volumes (VVols) storage architecture. I’ve been looking for this in their documentation for VVols and have not found it so I’m glad to see it’s finally available so you can see exactly what is supported and more importantly not-supported that may impact your plans to deploy VVols.
Right now the one non-supported feature that sticks out and is a big one is storage array replication which is not part of the current VASA 2.0 specification. I’m not sure when VMware will support this, hopefully it will be soon as it currently limits VVols adoption. You will probably see storage array vendors supporting this on the array side before VMware supports it through their Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) in vSphere. Note that while storage array replication is not currently supported vSphere Replication is as it is host based and sits above the VVols architecture. Also note though that while vSphere Replication is supported with VVols, SRM is currently not supported with VVols so it may be of little use to you.
Full-scale adoption of VVols will likely be slow in most shops as they both get experience with the new architecture and VMware along with storage array vendors improve feature support for VVols over time. But one thing to keep in mind when it comes to un-supported features with VVols its not all or nothing with VVols and you can continue to use VMFS right along side VVols to utilize features that currently are not supported such as FT and storage array replication. Also remember every vendors implementation of VVols is different and you should check with them to see what storage array features they support and do not support with VVols.
Below is the list of Not Supported features, expect this to shrink over time, be sure and check out the post on the vSphere blog for more details and the source for this information in the VMware Knowledge Base.
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 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)
