‘Performance of Storage Policy-Based Management in VMware vCenter Server 6.5’ White Paper

Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) is a storage policy framework that helps administrators match VM workload requirements against storage capabilities. SPBM runs as an independent service in the vCenter Server.

This paper covers SPBM performance and is divided into two sections. In the first section, we cover performance improvements of SPBM in vCenter 6.5 over vCenter 6.0 U3. In the second section, we cover scaling trends of SPBM in vCenter 6.5.

For this study, we looked at SPBM performance in four different configurations:

• Storage policies using VAIO (IOF) – vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) is a framework to filter I/Os of a VM workload. Starting with vSphere 6.0 U1, storage vendors can present capabilities of filters (such as caching and replication) using the VAIO framework.
• Storage policies using Tags (TAG) – Tags allow administrators to attach metadata to objects in the vSphere inventory to make these objects more sortable and searchable. These tags can be used in storage policies to guide storage placement.
• Storage policies using vSAN capabilities (VSAN) – VMware vSAN™ is the software powering hyper-converged infrastructure solutions. SPBM integrates with vSAN to discover the capabilities the vSAN setup offers and presents the Administrator’s options to author storage policies custom-made for the workload requirement.
• Storage policies using VVol capabilities (VVOL) – VMware vSphere® Virtual Volumes™ is a vSphere integration and management framework that virtualizes SAN/NAS arrays, enabling a more efficient operational model that is optimized for virtualized environments and centered on the application instead of the infrastructure. SPBM allows capturing storage service-level requirements (such as capacity, performance, and availability) in the form of storage policies to which virtual machines are associated.

Read the ‘Performance of Storage Policy-Based Management in VMware vCenter Server 6.5’ White Paper Here