vVOL architecture

The Virtual Volumes architecture has five major components:

vVOL Objects: Can be Config- vVOL (Metadata), Data- vVOL (VMDKs), Mem-vVOL (Snapshots), Swap- vVOL (Swap files), or Other- vVOL (Vendor solution-specific).
Protocol Endpoint (PE): It's a logical I/O proxy that permits ESXi to communicate with the storage and "speak" to vVOLs. ESXi uses Protocol Endpoints (PE) to establish a data path on demand from VMs to their respective vVOLs objects.
Storage Container (SC): Unlike traditional LUN and NFS-based vSphere storage, the vVOLs functionality does not require pre configured LUNs or volumes on the storage side, but at least a designed spaced is needed. This is called a storage container, which is a pool of raw storage capacity or an aggregation of storage capabilities. A storage container is basically a vVOLs "datastore" that contains all vVOLs objects.
VASA Provider (v3.0): This is the vVOLs storage provider for the storage awareness service for vSphere. The provider mediates out-of-band communication between the vCenter Server and ESXi hosts on one side and a storage system on the other.
Array: This implements vVOLs features; note that not all storage vendors implement vVOLs in the same way, so it really depends on the maturity of their solution.