Dell PowerStore Virtualization Infrastructure Guide

NVMe host namespaces for vVols

NVMe controller design allows each host NQN to host ID pair to act as a distinct host entity. ESXi hosts leverage this design by separating NVMe host NQN and host ID pairs into vVol and non-vVol host namespaces. A namespace is a logical unit of NVMe storage that behaves like a LUN or volume. The ESXi host uses two different controllers to access vVols and traditional volumes. In vSphere, the host entity is the same host for both vVols and traditional volumes. However, on the storage system, the same ESXi host using NVMe for vVols and non-vVol datastores are recognized as two different hosts. Thus, two unique host entries must be created on the storage system for NVMe vVol and NVMe traditional volume access. This design applies to both NVMe/TCP vVols and NVMe/FC vVols.