vSAN, also known as Virtual SAN is VMware’s software-defined storage solution which is tightly integrated with VMware vSphere.
VMware has announced the first release, version 5.5, back in March 2014. Since then vSAN has improved drastically and many new features have been added to it which provides performance, stability, security. vSAN completely changes the way in which storage is configured and mapped to the ESXi hosts. It eliminates the need of the additional storage boxes. Locally attached disks to the ESXi hosts are combined together to form a vSAN Datastore that can be provisioned and managed from vCenter using the vSphere Web Client.
vSAN is an object based storage system. vSAN Datastore supports all the vSphere features like HA, DRS, vMotion, Storage vMotion, etc. Also, vSAN has proven to be an excellent fit for all types of workloads.
vSAN provides two different configuration options, a hybrid configuration and an all-flash configuration. The hybrid configuration uses server-based flash devices to provide a cache layer for optimal performance while using magnetic disks to provide capacity and persistent data storage. Whereas All-flash configuration uses flash disks for both the caching layer and capacity layer.
vSAN Architecture -
Image Source - VMware
As you can see in above figure, vSAN architecture consists of two tiers -
1. Cache Tier
2. Capacity Tier
A cache tier is used for the read caching and write buffering, and a capacity tier is used for persistent storage.
vSAN uses a logical construct called disk groups to manage the relationship between capacity devices and their cache tier. We will discuss more about Read Caching, Write Buffering and Disk group in detail in another post.
Key Features of vSAN -
The features of vSAN depends on the type of license you're using but it includes the following -
It is a object based storage system which is completely software defined.
Since it is integrated into ESXi itself, there is no need of any additional installation.
It is pretty simple to configure and operate.
A cluster can include 2 to 64 nodes.
vSAN can easily be scale up or scale out whenever required.
VM-centric policy based management.
Software based deduplication and compression optimizes all-flash storage capacity providing as much as 7x data reduction with minimal CPU and memory overhead.
vSAN is capable of tolerating one or two failures with single parity of double parity protection.
vSAN supports all flash as well as hybrid architectures where Flash disks are used for caching purpose and magnetic disks are used for capacity purpose.
vSAN supports creating a stretched cluster with site and local protection between two geographically separate sites.
vSAN supports the most common protocols: NFS v4.1 and v3 and SMB v3 and v2.1.
iSCSI Access - From vSAN 6.7, vSAN supports Windows server Failover cluster technology.
vSAN Skyline Health - This provides integrated hardware compatibility checks, storage capacity reporting and diagnostics directly from vCenter server.
vSAN Support Insight - This helps keep vSAN running in an optimal state, saving monitoring and troubleshooting time by providing real-time support notifications and actionable recommendations.
Benefits of vSAN -
Simplicity
The configuration and management of vSAN is pretty simple as it is embedded in the vSphere. A fully functional vSAN cluster can be configured using vSphere Web Client with just a few clicks.
Agility
A storage solution must have the flexibility and agility to meet changes in demand and customer needs. vSAN does not follow the ‘one size fits all’ strategy and instead it allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly and efficiently using policies and rules.
Manageability
vSAN offers is not only easy to set up, but also easy to manage and provision. Its easy management and provisioning do not sacrifice performance, reduces costs considerably, brings assets online faster, and improves inventory management.
Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
The beauty of vSAN is that it can be deployed on inexpensive x86 servers with ease, which eliminates large up-front investments for organizations and allows them to grow at their own pace. In the long run, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment of requirement changes make it a cheaper yet efficient storage solution.
With this I'll wrap up this post here.
Stay tune, there is a lot more to come in this vSAN Series.
Thank you for reading!
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