vSphere 5.1 Storage DRS Interoperability

A while back I did this article on Storage DRS Interoperability. I had questions last week about this so I figured I would write a new article which reflects the current state (vSphere 5.1). I also included some details that are part of the interoperability white paper Frank and I did so that we have a fairly complete picture. This white paper is on 5.0, it will probably be updated at some point in the future.

The first column describes the feature or functionality, the second column the recommended or supported automation mode and the third and fourth column show which type of balancing is supported.

Capability	Automation Mode	Space Balancing	I/O Metric Balancing
Array-based Snapshots	Manual	Yes	Yes
Array-based Deduplication	Manual	Yes	Yes
Array-based Thin provisioning	Manual	Yes	Yes
Array-based Auto-Tiering	Manual	Yes	No
Array-based Replication	Manual	Yes	Yes
vSphere Raw Device Mappings	Fully Automated	Yes	Yes
vSphere Replication	Fully Automated	Yes	Yes
vSphere Snapshots	Fully Automated	Yes	Yes
vSphere Thin provisioned disks	Fully Automated	Yes	Yes
vSphere Linked Clones	Fully Automated (*)	Yes	Yes
vSphere Storage Metro Clustering	Manual	Yes	Yes
vSphere Site Recovery Manager	Not supported	n/a	n/a
VMware vCloud Director	Fully Automated (*)	Yes	Yes