Pure Storage Remote Client Plugin for vSphere, vVols and Storage Insights Lab

Welcome to WWT's lab for Pure's Storage Remote Client Plugin for VMware, vVols and Storage Insights. We designed this lab to showcase the new Remote Client Plugin and many of the features it enables for the VMware Administrator as it pertains to storage. After a brief introduction, you will dive right in to the Remote Client Plugin virtual appliance deployment and configuration along with a walkthrough of the many of the integrations the plugin brings.

Starting in vSphere 8.0, VMware no longer supports local plugins to be installed in vCenter and now relies on remote plugins. The Pure Storage Remote Client Plugin for vSphere provides the ability to VMware users to have insight into and control of their Pure Storage FlashArray environment while directly logged into the vSphere Client. The Pure Storage plugin extends the vSphere Client interface to include environmental statistics and objects that underpin the VMware objects in use and to provision new resources as needed.  

For those looking to move to VMware's Virtual Volumes (vVols) to provide VM granular control, management and storage policies, the Remote Client Plugin is required. You will see just how easy it is to setup, configure and migrate your VMs to a vVols backed datastore running on the Pure FlashArray.

After completing this lab users will gain an understanding of the following concepts:

• Deploy and configure the Remote Client Plugin
• Register the VASA provider to support Virtual Volumes (vVols)
• Create and mount datastores running on a FlashArray
• Create Storage Policies for protection
• Migrate VMs to vVol datastores
• Recover deleted VMs and disks
• Monitor capacity and performance of the datastores running on a FlashArray

This lab consists of a VMWare environment with a Pure FlashArray designed to provide a sandbox environment for testing.

• 1 x Windows 10 (Jumpbox)
• 1 x vCenter
• 1 x ESXi Host
• 1 x Pure FlashArray
• 1 x Pure Remote Client Plugin virtual appliance
• 1 x Ubuntu VM