vSphere Storage APIs Explained | VASA, VAAI, PSA & VADP

What Is vSphere Storage APIs

VMware vSphere is a popular server virtualization software suite with a rich and powerful storage system. Many of its interactive features are provided by a set of APIs.

vSphere Storage APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) is a family of APIs that allow third-party applications to interact with and manage storage resources in a VMware vSphere environment. This integration helps ensure minimal downtime and efficient data recovery.

Would you like more details on how this process works?

4 Common vSphere Storage APIs

VMware provides many vSphere Storage APIs to enable different capabilities and meet different needs. This part will highlight 4 common types of vStorage APIs including VASA, VAAI, VAMP, and PSA.

vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)

vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness as one of VMware storage API is released with vSphere 5. These APIs enable communications between vCenter Server and underlying storage.

Through VASA, storage entities can inform vCenter Server about their configurations, storage health and events, enabling vCenter to recognize the storage arrays and its capabilities including RAID, native thin provisioning, and deduplication, etc. These capabilities are made visible within vCenter, which makes it easier for administrators to make decisions about how data stores should be maintained.

VASA also provides information about storage arrays to vSphere’s Profile-Driven Storage feature and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), delivering VM storage requirements from vCenter Server to a storage entity. The Profile-Driven Storage feature ensures that the storage layer meets the requirement, and Storage DRS can work optimally with them.

VASA becomes essential when you work with Virtual Volumes, vSAN, vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO), and storage VM policies.

vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)

Storage APIs for Array Integration, also known as VMware VAAI, first introduced in vSphere 4.1. These APIs enable communications between VMware ESXi host and storage devices, enhancing performance and reducing the CPU overhead on the host servers.

VMware VAAI include 2 components: Hardware Acceleration APIs and Array Thin Provisioning APIs.

• Hardware Acceleration APIs help arrays to integrate with vSphere, so that vSphere can offload certain storage operations to the array. This integration significantly reduces CPU overhead on the host.
• Array Thin Provisioning APIs allows VMs to utilize only the storage they need, while the storage array manages space allocation, optimizing storage use.

VMware VAAI is to help storage vendors provide hardware assistance to speed up VMware I/O operations that are more efficiently accomplished in the storage hardware.

vSphere Storage APIs for Multipathing (PSA)

vSphere APIs for Multipathing, also known as Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA), enable VMware to control I/O path selection effectively in a host to storage devices.

The Path Selection API (PSA) allow storage partners to create and deliver multipathing and load-balancing plug-ins that are optimized for each array. These APIs ensure optimal performance by allowing administrators to configure and monitor paths effectively.

VMware vSphere Storage APIs – Data Protection (VADP)

VMware vSphere Storage APIs – Data Protection, also known as vStorage APIs for Data Protection or VADP, is the next generation of VMware’s data protection framework originally introduced in vSphere 4.0 that enables backup products to create centralized backup of virtual machines while minimizing impact on performance.

VMware vSphere Storage APIs - Data Protection provides a framework for backup and recovery solutions, allowing for:

• Image-Level Backups: VMware VADP facilitates the creation of backups at the VM image level, ensuring quick recovery and minimizing downtime.
• Changed Block Tracking (CBT): This feature enables incremental backups by tracking changes made to VMs, thus optimizing backup processes and storage usage.

Work with VMware VADP for Better Data Protection [Free Tool]

AOMEI Cyber Backup is particularly beneficial when combined with vSphere Storage APIs, such as VADP, to optimize backup processes.

Its robust backup options ensures that critical data is safeguarded against loss or corruption.

Click the following button to download the VMware backup software:

*You can choose to install this VM backup software on either Windows or Linux system.

Easily Create Free and Centralized Backup for VMware ESXi VMs

Next, I will demonstrate how to achieve efficient, reliable, and secure data protection strategies via AOMEI Cyber Backup.

Step 1. Bind Devices

✔Access to AOMEI Cyber Backup web client, navigate to Source Device > VMware > + Add VMware Device to Add vCenter or Standalone ESXi host. And then click … > Bind Device.

Step 2. Create Backup Task

✔Navigate to Backup Task > + Create New Task, and select VMware ESXi Backup as the Backup Type.

Step 3. Configure VMware Backup Task

✔Set Task Name, Device, Target, Archive and Schedule as needed.

• Task Name: Change the task name or use the default name with an ordinal.
• Device: Select VMware ESXi virtual machines to back up from the list.

• Target: Choose to back up to a local path, or to a network path like NAS.
• Archive (optional): Fill in Amazon S3 bucket information and choose to backup VMware to AWS easily.
• Schedule (optional): Perform full, differential, or incremental backup, and automate the VMware backup task according to the frequency such as daily, weekly or monthly.

Step 4. Run VMware Backup

✔Click Start Backup and select Add the schedule and start backup now, or Add the schedule only.

Created backup tasks will be listed and monitored separately, for restoring, progress checking and schedule changing.

Step 5. Restore from Backup

✔Select the backup task and click … > Restore to open the wizard, select the target VM and Restore to original location option, click Start Restore.

✔Or Navigate to Backup Management > History Versions, all restore points of the VMs will be clearly listed for selection.

While the Free Edition covers most VM backup need, you can also upgrade to Premium Edition to enjoy more:
▶ Backup Cleanup: Configure a retention policy to auto delete old backup files and save storage space.
▶ Batch VM Backup: Batch backup and restore large numbers of VMs managed by vCenter Server or on standalone ESXi hosts.
▶ Restore to New Location: Create a new VM in the same or another datastore/host directly from the backup to perform out-of-spacre recovery, saves the trouble of re-configuring the new VM.

Summary

vSphere Storage APIs provide incredible extended functionality to the virtual storage system. This article briefly introduced what it is and presented 4 common types of vStorage APIs, including VASA, VAAI, PSA and VADP.

VMware VADP is designed to replace the deprecated official backup software VMware Data Protection (VDP). Therefore, you may need to migrate your backup schedules to the reliable third-party software - AOMEI Cyber Backup. With the free VM backup solution, you can centrally manage and automate the backup and recovery of multiple VMware ESXi or Hyper-V VMs.

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