Home > Storage > PowerStore > Virtualization and Cloud > Dell PowerStore: VMware vSphere with Tanzu and TKG Clusters > Virtual Volumes (vVols)
VMware Virtual Volumes is a storage framework which allows VM data to be stored on individual Virtual Volumes within a Storage Container. vVols allow data services to be applied at a VM-granularity level while using Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM). Using VM Storage Policies, vVol storage can be used for Supervisor Control Plane Nodes, Ephemeral Disks, Image Cache, and Persistent Volumes.
Note: At this point, a pattern has been established that using the vSphere CSI driver, PowerStore block volumes, NFS exports, and vVols are all suitable storage types for vSphere with Tanzu and Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters. It is up to the vSphere administrator to decide what type of storage to use for each component in vSphere with Tanzu based on requests made by the DevOps team. For more information about Dell Technologies CSI drivers, see https://dell.github.io/csm-docs/docs/csidriver/.
The PowerStore installation automatically provisions a default storage container for vVols. Before the storage container can be used, the PowerStore VASA provider must be registered with vCenter to present the storage container to the vSphere hosts. A vVol datastore is then created using the storage container. For more information about registering the VASA provider and creating a vVol datastore, see the white paper Dell PowerStore: Virtualization Integration.
After the PowerStore VASA provider has been registered with vCenter Server and the vVol datastore created, one or more VM Storage Policies must be established to allow vSphere with Tanzu and Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters to consume vVol storage.
Note: Like block volumes, a shares-based volume performance policy can be used with vVols to enforce the relative performance priority of a given vVol. Available options are Low, Medium (default), and High. The volume performance policy can be used as a storage tiering mechanism.