The Virtual Volumes functionality changes the storage management paradigm from managing space inside datastores to managing abstract storage objects handled by storage arrays.

With Virtual Volumes, an individual virtual machine, not the datastore, becomes a unit of storage management, while storage hardware gains complete control over virtual disk content, layout, and management. The vSphere Storage documentation discusses Virtual Volumes in some detail and explains how to manage them by using the vSphere Client.

The following ESXCLI commands are available for managing display information about virtual volumes and for unbinding all Virtual Volumes from all vendor providers. See the vSphere Storage documentation for information on creating Virtual Volumes and configuring multipathing and SCSI-based endpoints.

Table 1. VVol Commands
Command Description
esxcli storage vvol daemon unbindall Unbinds all Virtual Volume instances from all storage providers that are known to the ESXi host.
esxcli storage vvol protocolendpoint list Lists the VVol protocol endpoints currently known to the ESXi host.
esxcli storage vvol storagecontainer list Lists the VVol storage containers currently known to the ESXi host.
esxcli storage vvol storagecontainer restore Restores storage containers of vendor providers that are registered on the host.
esxcli storage vvol vasacontext get Gets the VASA context (VC UUID).
esxcli storage vvol vendorprovider list Lists the vendor providers registered on the host.
esxcli storage vvol vendorprovider restore Restores the vendor providers that are registered on the host.