Virtual Volumes (VVols) were introduced in vSphere 6.0. Normally, when using iSCSI, NFS, or Fibre Channel storage, the VMware administrator creates a small number of large LUNs that hold many VMs. Administrators are forced to manage these datastores and decide which VMs reside in them. Policy-based metrics, such as QoS, can only be applied at the datastore level so all the VMs in the datastore get the same service level. Furthermore, LUNs and datastore sizes are over-provisioned, which wastes space on the storage array. Creating a new datastore often involves both the storage administrator to create the LUN and the VMware administrator to turn that LUN into a datastore.

All of these issues are solved by VVols. When you create a VM and target VVol storage, each component of the VM that requires storage is given a VVol on the storage array. vCenter and the storage array use a VASA provider in order to communicate.

On the storage array, compatibility profiles are created and tagged by the storage administrator. These tags can be used by the VMware administrator to place the VM on the correct storage.