A while back I did this article on Storage DRS Interoperability. I had questions last week about this so I figured I would write a new article which reflects the current state (vSphere 5.1). I also included some details that are part of the interoperability white paper Frank and I did so that we have a fairly complete picture. This white paper is on 5.0, it will probably be updated at some point in the future.
The first column describes the feature or functionality, the second column the recommended or supported automation mode and the third and fourth column show which type of balancing is supported.
| Capability | Automation Mode | Space Balancing | I/O Metric Balancing |
| Array-based Snapshots | Manual | Yes | Yes |
| Array-based Deduplication | Manual | Yes | Yes |
| Array-based Thin provisioning | Manual | Yes | Yes |
| Array-based Auto-Tiering | Manual | Yes | No |
| Array-based Replication | Manual | Yes | Yes |
| vSphere Raw Device Mappings | Fully Automated | Yes | Yes |
| vSphere Replication | Fully Automated | Yes | Yes |
| vSphere Snapshots | Fully Automated | Yes | Yes |
| vSphere Thin provisioned disks | Fully Automated | Yes | Yes |
| vSphere Linked Clones | Fully Automated (*) | Yes | Yes |
| vSphere Storage Metro Clustering | Manual | Yes | Yes |
| vSphere Site Recovery Manager | Not supported | n/a | n/a |
| VMware vCloud Director | Fully Automated (*) | Yes | Yes |
| VMware View (Linked Clones) | Not Supported | n/a | n/a | VMware View (Full Clones) | Fully Automated | Yes | Yes |
(*) = Change from 5.0
Hello,
great to see that Linked Clones are now supported with sDRS for both type of balancing. but, is it supported with View?
thank you in advance.
sincerely
Eric
Not with linked clones unfortunately. Just updated the article. Thanks for the question!
Duncan, regarding vCloud Director support: the old SDRS whitepaper considered only vCloud Director 1.5 with vSphere 5.0. Now we have two more options: VCD 5.1 with vSphere 5.1 (fully supported) but also VCD 5.1 with vSphere 5.0. vCAT implies that it is not supported. I would like to verify it is actually true and that there is a reason for it not to work or it is just a QA constrain. Do you have such information?
Can I enable SIOC on the Datastore storage VMware View (Linked Clones)?
How does Storage DRS do anything at all for physical RDMs?? I see claims for full RDM support but I don’t see anyone talking about it or explaining it. Can you explain this?