1.3 Overview

The Virtual Disk Service Remote Protocol provides a mechanism for remote configuration of disks, partitions, volumes, and iSCSI initiators on a server. Through the Virtual Disk Service Remote Protocol, a client can change the configuration of disks into partitions, partitions into volumes, and volumes into file systems. The protocol also enables clients to obtain notifications of changes to these storage objects.

In the Virtual Disk Service Remote Protocol, two entities are involved: the server, whose storage is configured, and the client, which accesses and requests changes to the server storage configuration.

The Virtual Disk Service Remote Protocol is expressed as a set of DCOM interfaces. For a server, this protocol implements support for the DCOM interface in order to manage storage. For a client, this protocol invokes method calls on the interface in order to perform disk and volume configuration tasks on the server.<1>