VVols by the numbers: an update on VVol adoption in the real world

VMware’s new Virtual Volumes (VVols) storage architecture has been out for almost 2 years now and customer adoption has been pretty light so far. There are a number of reasons for this including the simple fact that many customers are slow to migrate to brand new technologies. At HPE with 3PAR StoreServ arrays we collect point in time metrics on VVols via our phone home capabilities for customers that opt-in to it (most do). As a result we can see who is using VVols and other info such as how many VM’s they are creating on VVols and how many VVols those VMs have. One of our product managers collects and formats that information and presents it to us periodically so I thought I would share some details from his latest report.

• 1,887 arrays have the VASA Provider enabled in the array
• 1,014 arrays reporting VVols data (requires 3.2.2 firmware)
• 258 arrays with at least one VVol
• Compared to 1 year ago 5.6x more arrays are running VVols
• Jan 2016 metrics: 2 arrays with 100+ VVols, 3 with 51-100 VVols, 5 with 11-50 VVols and 36 with less than 10 VVols
• Jan 2017 metrics: 43 arrays with 100+ VVols, 11 with 51-100 VVols, 51 with 11-50 VVols and 111 with less than 10 VVols
• Large number of those VVol deployments have happened in last 3 months
• Largest customer has 1,457 VVols and 576 VMs, next 2 largest have 1,191 VVols/344 VMs and 1,453 VVols/304 VMs
• #10 largest customer in VVol deployments has 477 VVols and 169 VMs
• Average VVol to VM ratio around 4.5, highest customers at around 9 VVols per VM

As you can see we have some good sized VVol deployments out there and it’s encouraging to see more people giving VVols a try in their own environments. I expect we will see a good up tic this year as VVols 2.0 is out now as part of vSphere 6.5 which brings maturity and replication to VVols and more customers migrate to vSphere 6.x which is required for VVol support. I have met with several large customers that are planning large scale VVol deployments so hopefully we’ll see these numbers continue to rise.