VMware Virtual SAN 6.2: The Technology Future

The latest version of Virtual SAN ( v. 6.2 ), announced in February of this year, is the largest release of the product since its debut in March 2014. The list of new features is impressive and makes Virtual SAN extremely competitive compared to even more complex storage platforms.

Virtual SAN is a data storage platform, a key software component that makes VMware's Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) strategy possible. HCI is a fundamentally new model for building and operating an IT infrastructure .

The new IT architecture has many benefits for the end customer, including:

• Streamline procurement, deployment and support. Customers can build their infrastructure in a gradual and scalable way in accordance with growing requirements.
• Adaptive software architecture that uses modern technological trends, such as: increasing the density of the CPU; new generation of solid-state drives and non-volatile memory; Network development (40 GB, 100 GB Ethernet) and protocols (NVMe).
• Last but not least: a single operating model that allows customers to manage their entire IT infrastructure with a single set of tools.

One of the reasons for the popularity of HCS VMware is the unique architecture of Virtual SAN, an enterprise-level storage platform that was designed specifically for use in HCI. Another important aspect is the operational advantage with VMware HCS. VSAN v. 6.2 is a new scalable paradigm for infrastructure management and resource consumption.

New paradigm of infrastructure management

In traditional data centers, IT services were demarcated (computing and network resources, storage), not only for organizational reasons, but also for various tools, operating procedures, and experience in each area.

HCI breaks down these barriers. With hardware platforms (x86 servers) and software for delivering IT services , customers need hands-on experience and a single set of tools to manage their infrastructure. In addition, they want to do this with the ability to scale and reduce the staff of IT generalists.

And this is exactly what happens with Virtual SAN. In April 2015, for example, the Health-Check Plugin was submitted. With Virtual SAN 6.1 in September 2015, this turned into a Health Service - not just a plugin, but a product feature. The service checks the compatibility of storage devices and controllers, as well as the network configuration. It also monitors reports on storage usage and even offers performance diagnostics. All this is initially integrated with the vCenter Server. User can run tests (for example, run tests)

The user can run tests (for example, on performance) in advance, which will allow to determine the health and status of the platform at any particular moment. As you can see, health checks go far beyond the storage aspects - they cover the entire infrastructure.

The same goes for the new Performance Service introduced in VSAN 6.2. The service provides detailed performance metrics for a custom time interval, both for physical infrastructure (cluster, node, or individual device), as well as for virtual machines and their state: virtual disks, metadata , etc. The service records such indicators as IOPS, throughput , delays and so on.

New in VSAN 6.2: data deduplication and compression

Enabling the "space saving" feature at the cluster level and deduplication occur for each disk group. A higher deduplication ratio will be for a larger disk group. Once the blocks are deduplicated, they are compressed. This is already a significant savings in space, but in combination with deduplication, sevenfold savings can be achieved (of course, this depends on the amount of work and the type of VM).

RAID-5 / RAID-6 - Erasure Coding

Sometimes RAID 5 and RAID 6 are associated with erasure coding. In this case, RAID-5 requires at least 4 hosts, since it uses 3 + 1 logic. With 4 hosts, 1 can fail without data loss. This leads to a significant reduction in the required disk power. Typically, a 20GB drive requires 40GB of disk space, but in the case of RAID-5, this requirement is reduced to ~ 27GB.

Quality of Service (QoS)

QoS allows you to use VMDK IOP Limits. They can be deployed using the Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM), linked to an existing policy. Service providers can use this to create new products and services using the same cluster / storage pool.
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VMware Virtual SAN Overview

VSAN is built into the hypervisor; This means that there is no need to download and install any programs, with the exception of the lightweight VSAN plugin. VSAN can be deployed in a number of ways, including the low-cost industry standard x86 components, which can drastically reduce initial deployment costs. The latest VSAN update has added several key features. The latest version of VSAN now supports up to 64 nodes per cluster, 200 virtual machines per host, up to 6,400 virtual machines per cluster. With the all-flash configuration, users can see a performance increase of 4.5 times. Now virtual machines can be placed on server racks to create better accessibility in the event of a total power failure or network failure.

Setup and Configuration

Installing and configuring VSAN will be clear to those who have been working with the vSphere platform for a long time. VSAN itself is a kind of plugin. Through the vSphere web client interface, the user needs to add all the hosts configured for data storage to the VSAN cluster; There is a wizard for this in vSphere. First you need to select the hosts that should be connected to VSAN, then click on the add network icon, select a connection type, select a distributed port group, select port properties, IP settings (or leave the default), and then complete the wizard to add VSAN network.

Once the hosts are added to the network, select the cluster, select the Manage tab, under Virtual SAN, click General, click the edit button, and then enable Virtual SAN. Once Virtual SAN has been selected, users will see a message asking if they want to configure Virtual SAN automatically or manually (the administrator will have to choose which drives to connect to Virtual SAN).

If you select manual configuration, you will need to create disk groups through the disk management tab. Select a host, and then select the disk group creation icon. Each disk group must contain at least one SSD and one HDD (you can connect up to six HDDs in each disk group). At least three hosts must have disk groups created. Once disk groups have been created, the VSAN data store becomes available, showing the total storage capacity of the selected disks. The storage is now configured and ready to use.


Deploying and configuring virtual network storage is a simple process for those who are used to working in virtual environments, and especially for those who are familiar with vSphere and use it regularly. Most likely, if you deploy VSAN, then you are already using vSphere, and the process is easy for you.