App Volumes Manager is now aware of the shared physical datastores (storage) across multiple vCenter Servers that are used to connect to the datastore.

What Is a Shared Datastore

A shared datastore or location is a physical datastore that is connected to different vCenter Servers, and visible across the vCenter Servers. The datastore is identified based on the UUID of the filesystem.

A non-shared datastore, by contrast is not visible across multiple vCenter Servers. This storage might be a local storage or a LUN accessible to only one vCenter Server.

You can view a list of all the shared physical datastores from App Volumes Manager.

Identifying a Shared Datastore

You can identify a shared datastore by a unique identifier such as UUID. From App Volumes Manager, go to INFRASTRUCTURE > Storages and click the "+" sign next to a storage LUN. Some of the details displayed are as follows: Number of AppStacks, Number of Packages, Number of Writables (aggregate of Writable Volumes and Writable Volumes (2.x)), and UUID.

Writable Volumes and Shared Datastores

When you import Writable Volumes, any Writable Volumes that are present in a shared datastore are considered to be the same Writable Volumes but from different locations. For example, when a Writable Volume is available from multiple vCenter Servers, the volume is not considered as a duplicate.

When a Writable Volume is created in a datastore, it gets created in all shared locations.

When a user logs in to a desktop, any Writable Volume that is assigned to the user can be attached from a shared datastore provided the location is reachable.

You must have a shared datastore between the source and destination vCenter Server to move and back up volumes across different vCenter Servers and if the source volumes are located in a non-shared datastore.

To back up a Writable Volume across different vCenter Servers, with the volume located in a non-shared datastore, you must first move the volume to a shared datastore, and then back up the volume to the destination datastore.

Supported Datastores

The following datastores types are supported:
  • VMFS (version 3, 5, and 6)
  • NFS (version 3 and 4.1)
Note: When using an NFS datastore, if the same version of the datastore is not used to mount in all the vCenter Servers, then those storage locations are not considered as shared locations.