A significant, but under-reported benefit of vVols is data set mobility. Because a vVol-based VM’s storage is not encapsulated in a VMDK file, the VM’s data can easily be shared and moved.
A data vVol is a virtual block device presented to a VM; it is essentially identical to a virtual mode RDM. Thus, a data vVol (or a volume created by copying a snapshot of it) can be used by software that can interpret its contents, for example an NFS or XFS file system created by the VM.
Therefore, it is possible to present a data vVol, or a volume created from a snapshot of one, to a physical server, to present a volume created by physical server to a vVol-based VM as a vVol, or to overwrite a vVol from a volume created by a physical server.
This is an important benefit of the FlashArray vVol implementation. The following blog posts contain examples of and additional information about data mobility with FlashArray vVols:
https://www.codyhosterman.com/2017/10/comparing-vvols-to-vmdks-and-rdms/
https://www.codyhosterman.com/2017/12/vvol-data-mobility-virtual-to-physical/
[Web Guide: Implementing vSphere Virtual Volumes with FlashArray]