VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes, also known as vVols, virtualizes storage devices by abstracting physical hardware resources into logical pools of capacity. The Virtual Volumes functionality changes the storage management paradigm from managing space inside datastores to managing abstract storage objects handled by storage arrays. With Virtual Volumes, an individual virtual machine, not the datastore, becomes a unit of storage management, while storage hardware gains complete control over virtual disk content, layout, and management.

Virtual Volumes maps virtual disks and their derivatives, clones, snapshots, and replicas, directly to objects, called virtual volumes, on a storage system. This mapping allows vSphere to offload intensive storage operations such as snapshot, cloning, and replication to the storage system.