Thursday 26 April 2018

New way of Virtual Storage - "vSAN"


Let us discuss about Storage Virtualization. VMware vSAN is a software based storage solution. It can be defined as hyper-converged, software defined storage or hypervisor converged also. It is a separate product from vSphere and need its own Licensing.  vSAN can be managed by both the Windows version of vCenter Server and the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA).

As a component of vSphere, vSAN extends the hypervisor to pool and abstract server based storage resources i.e. it basically utilizes ESXi Host local storage and represent them as a single datastore. Refer the below figure.


It is much simple and cost effective when compared to external storage arrays. Integration with vSphere makes vSAN simple and easy to configure. If you know HA and DRS configuration it will be easy to go with vSAN. Going further vSAN is also integrated with vRealize Suite and support most of the vSphere functionalities such as DRS, HA, vMotion and more.


Prerequisites or Requirement:

  •         ESXi host should be managed by vCenter Server 5.5 and It should be configured as Virtual SAN cluster.
  •        Each ESXi host must have minimum of single 1 Gb Ethernet adapter available solely for the use of virtual SAN
  •        At least 1 SAS or SATA solid state Drive (SSD) should be part of each ESXi host with SSD is not claimed by vSphere Flash Read Cache
  •        Minimum of 3 ESXi 5.5 hosts with all contributing local disks (1 SSD and 1 HDD) to VSAN cluster
  •        Minimum 4 GB of RAM for ESXi host 

·   Important points: A Virtual SAN cluster can include hosts with capacity and hosts without capacity.
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  •      All hosts in the Virtual SAN cluster must have the same on-disk format.
  •       Make sure that the destination cluster is Virtual SAN enabled before you move a host from a Virtual SAN cluster to another cluster.
  •       A Virtual SAN cluster must include a minimum of three ESXi hosts. For a Virtual SAN cluster to tolerate host and device failures, at least three hosts that join the Virtual SAN cluster must contribute capacity to the cluster. For best results, consider adding four or more hosts contributing capacity to the cluster.
  •      To access the Virtual SAN data store, an ESXi host must be a member of the Virtual SAN cluster.
         
         vSAN Cluster:

   


    
     In coming article will discuss about vSAN configuration.

      
     Thanks for reading, do share it if you find it informative.

     

       
     Keep learning….
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    With regards,
    Sayed









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