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The type of vVol provisioned depends on the type of data that is being stored:
At a minimum, three vVols are required for each powered-on VM: data for the hard disk, config for the configuration, and swap for the memory pages.
The Virtual Volumes card provides details about the vVols used for the VM. PowerStore uses the VASA protocol to communicate with vSphere to create, bind, unbind, and delete vVols automatically, as needed. Manual management of these vVols is not required. This page also provides options to migrate vVols, manage the Watchlist, and collect support materials.
Information such as the vVol name, type, capacity, storage container, appliance, and I/O priority are displayed, as shown in the following figure:
In PowerStoreOS 1.0, vVols can be migrated between appliances within the cluster. However, it is limited to vVols that are not in use so the virtual machine must be powered off before any of its vVols can be migrated. Starting with PowerStoreOS 2.0, online vVol migration is supported. This functionality allows vVols that are used for powered-on virtual machines to be migrated between appliances within the cluster.
In order to support online vVol migration, the ESXi host must be running VMware ESXi 6.7 P02 or higher. Previous versions of VMware ESXi do not support online vVol migration as this functionality requires ESXi vVol rebind orchestration. In this scenario, the vVol must be unbound manually by powering off the virtual machine or the ESXi host must be upgraded to the appropriate version.
The online migration operation is transparent to the virtual machine and no rescans are required. Like volume migrations, both manual and assisted migrations are available for vVols. The migration traffic flows over the first two ports of the four-port card using the Intra-Cluster Management (ICD) and Intra-Cluster Data (ICD) IPv6 networks.
It is possible to have multiple vVols for a single virtual machine spread across multiple appliances. The best practice recommendation is to have all vVols for a virtual machine on the same appliance. Online vVol migration can be used as a nondisruptive method to consolidate a virtual machine’s vVols onto a single appliance.
vVol migrations can be initiated from the VM Details > Virtual Volumes or Storage Container Details > Virtual Volumes pages. The following figure shows the migrate operation:
Here is the workflow for an online vVol migration:
For more information about manual and assisted migrations, see the document Dell PowerStore: Clustering and High Availability.