You use VASA Provider for clustered Data ONTAP to create VVOLs. Its Provision VVOL Datastore wizard performs all the necessary storage-side setup such as creating export policies, initiator groups, and mapping LUNs.
About this task
Do not use the vCenter New Datastore wizard to create VVOLs for NetApp storage. The vCenter New Datastore wizard does not perform the storage-side setup that the VASA Provider Provision VVOL Datastore wizard does.
To provision VVOL datastores, complete the following steps:
Steps
- From the vSphere Web Client Home page, click Hosts and Clusters.
- In the navigation pane, expand the datacenter where you want to provision the datastore.
To make the datastore available to... |
Do this... |
All hosts in a datacenter |
Right-click the datacenter and select . |
All hosts in a cluster |
Right-click the datacenter and select . |
A single host |
Right-click the datacenter and select . |
- Complete the pages in the Provision VVOL Datastore Wizard to create the datastore.

- Name page: Specify a name and protocol for the new VVOL, datastore. It is also a good practice to enter a description for the new datastore.
- Storage Capability Profile page: Select the profiles that you want to be available to the VVOLs datastore when the storage is provisioned. You can select multiple profiles.
Note: You create storage capability profiles from the VASA Provider GUI, which you access from Virtual Storage Console for VMware vSphere GUI.
- Storage System page: From the drop-down list, select the storage system and Storage Virtual Machine (SVM, formerly known as Vserver) where the VVOL datastore will be created.
The wizard only displays storage systems and SVMs that match the storage capability profiles you specified on the previous screen.
On this page, you must also specify whether wizard uses existing FlexVols for the storage or prompts you for information to create new FlexVols.
- Decide whether you want to use existing FlexVols in the VVOL datastore or create new ones. You cannot do both.
Remember that all the FlexVols in a VVOL datastore must be from the same SVM.
Recommendation: When you are working with SAN VVOL datastores, it is a good practice to store no more than 30 virtual machines on one FlexVol and provision your VVOL datastores accordingly. This is because Data ONTAP FlexVols support a limited number of LUNs per FlexVol. A single virtual machine takes up multiple LUNs based on the number of disks, number of Snapshot copies, and so on. NFS VVOL datastores do not have this constraint.
- Default Profile page: Specify the storage capability profile that is used for virtual machines that do not specify a specific storage capability. This happens when the virtual machine is automatically provisioned for datastores, including config VVOLs that are used by vSphere to hold configuration information, data VVOLs that contain operating system information and user files, and swap VVOLs.
- Ready to Complete page: Review the information you have supplied for the VVOL datastore. If it is correct, select Finish.
If the information is incorrect, return to the appropriate page and correct it.
- Click Finish.
The wizard creates the VVOL datastore. It displays a success message when it finishes.