Can someone explain VVOLs to me?

[Krenztor]

I've read a number of articles and watched some YouTube videos of people trying to explain VVOLs but they still are not clear to me.  All of the explanations I've seen seem to start with the premise that I know how to configure the storage array or that the storage array is very homogeneous.

Let's say you have a storage array with a mix of SSDs, 15k, and SATA drives.  Usually these would be associated with Gold, Silver, and Bronze storage or a similar scheme.  How would you configure VVOLs for this scenario?  From everything I've seen there would be just one Storage Container and one Virtual Datastore and there would be three Storage Policies which each are associated with either Gold, Silver, or Bronze.  Is this correct?  If it is then what gets configured in the Gold policy that makes it so it only uses the SSDs?   And if everything is in just one datastore how will I know what percentage of my SSD space has been filled up?

https://ha.yellow-bricks.com/vvol%20diagram1.png

[scott28tt]

Moderator note: This isn't a VCAP question, thread moved to the vSphere Storage area.

[Nick_Andreev]

I haven't played with VVOLs, but my understanding is, that storage tier (SSD, SAS, SATA) is one of the Storage Capabilities (from your screenshot) presented by the array. As long as you add this storage capability to your policy, i.e. SSD to Gold, space for your VM disk will be provisioned on the specified storage tier.