Raw capacity on a vVols-capable array, presented through its VASA provider and shown in vCenter as a vVols datastore.
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Terms in this definition
- Capacity
A reserved block of compute for a tenant whose size is fixed by its SKU; Fabric F SKUs express it in capacity units (CUs). Workspaces assigned to it unlock features like Copilot, and from F64 upwards people with free licences can view Power BI content.
- VASA
API that lets storage providers describe their capabilities to vCenter, feeding SPBM. vVols arrays must have one; vSAN registers its own automatically.
- Provider
The organisation that shares data in OpenSharing. Recipients also see a provider as a Unity Catalog securable, from which shares can be mounted as catalogs.
- vCenter
Management software for VMs, clusters and ESX hosts. Each domain in VCF gets a dedicated one.
- vSphere Virtual Volumes
Deprecated in vSphere 9.0, this framework has the array, through VASA, hold every virtual machine disk as an individual volume, grouped into storage containers.
- Datastore
A named pointer in the workspace to Blob, Azure Files or ADLS Gen2 storage that keeps the connection details, so code never needs to carry storage keys itself.
Related terms
- App Service backup
Scheduled or on-demand custom backup saving an app's configuration and content as blobs in a storage container within the same subscription. It is configured for each app or slot and can be restored to a different one.
- vVols
Storage approach in which arrays that support VASA present a storage container to vSphere as a datastore, holding each VM disk as its own object. It is deprecated as of 9.0 for both VCF and vSphere Foundation.