Protocol Endpoints in vSphere

There are multiple ways to view Protocol Endpoints that the ESXi hosts is connected with or is currently using as a mount point for a vVol Datastore.

• From the Hosts and Datacenter view, Navigate to Host -> Configure -> Storage Devices. This view will show all connected storage devices to this ESXi hosts. All Protocol Endpoints that are connected via SAN will show as a 1.00 MB device
  From this view the LUN ID, Transport, Multipathing and much more can be found.

• From the Hosts and Datacenter view, Navigate to Host -> Configure -> Protocol Endpoints

  This View will only display Protocol Endpoints that are actively being used as a mount point for a vVol Datastore and it's Operational State

  In the previous page there was a PE that was LUN ID 253, however on this page that PE does not show up as configured or Operational. This is because that PE does not have a vVol Datastore that it is being used for. This is expected behavior. If a vVol datastore is not mounted to the ESXi host then no configured PEs will display in this View. Multipathing is configured from the Protocol Endpoint and not from a sub lun. Each sub lun connection inherits the multipathing policy set on the PE.
  Note:

  BEST PRACTICE: Configure the round robin path selection policy for PEs.

• From the Datastore View, Navigate to a vVol Datastore -> Configure -> Protocol Endpoints

  This page will display all the PEs that this vVol Datastore (storage container) that are on the FlashArray. By default there will only be one PE on the FA.

  In this example there are two PEs.

  Select one of the PEs and click on the Host Mount Data tab From here the mounted hosts will be displayed. Take note that there is a UI bug that will always show the Operational Status as not accessible.

• By comparison, when the 2nd PE is viewed, there are no mounted hosts. This is because the second PE is not connected via that SAN to any ESXi hosts in this vCenter.

• From the Datastore View page, Navigate to a vVol Datastore -> Configure -> Connectivity with Hosts

  This page will show the mounted hosts connectivity with the vVol Datastore. Here the expected connectivity is Connected. If a host has lost management connectivity then the host will show as disconnected.

With regards to PE Queue Depths, ESXi behaves differently with respect to queue depth limits for PEs than for other volumes. Everpure recommends leaving ESXi PE queue depth limits at the default values.

The scale and dynamic nature of vVols intrinsically changes VMware storage provisioning. To provide scale and flexibility for vVols, VMware adopted the T10 administrative logical unit (ALU) standard, which it calls protocol endpoint (PE). vVols are connected to VMs through PEs acting as subsidiary logical units (SLUs, also called sub-luns).