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VSAN Part 2 – What do you need to get started?
This post contains the list of items you will need to get started with VSAN. I’ll also try to highlight some best practices when it comes to configuring VSAN. First off, lets start with the software...
View ArticleVSAN Part 3 – It is not a Virtual Storage Appliance
I’ve actually had to change the order of VSAN posts just to make this very point – VSAN is NOT a Virtual Storage Appliance. I’ve seen multiple conversations on twitter, and some blog posts, which are...
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VSAN Part 4 – Understanding Objects and Components
One of the most important concepts to understand in VSAN, in my opinion, is the notion of storage objects and components. Virtual Machines deployed on a vsanDatastore may have 4 different kinds of...
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VSAN Part 5 – The role of VASA
VASA, originally introduced in vSphere 5.0, are an extension of the vSphere Storage APIs. VASA is shorthand for vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness. It initially allowed storage arrays to...
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VSAN Part 6 – Manual or Automatic Mode
The creation of a VSAN cluster is identical in many respects to how a vSphere administrator might create a DRS or vSphere HA cluster. A cluster object is created in the vCenter inventory, and one can...
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VSAN Part 7 – Capabilities and VM Storage Policies
In this post, the VSAN capabilities are examined in detail. These capabilities, which are surfaced by the VASA storage provider when the cluster is configured successfully, are used to set the...
View ArticleVSAN Part 8 – The role of the SSD
I will start with a caveat. The plan is to support both Solid State Disks and PCIe flash devices on VSAN. However, for the purposes of this post, I will refer to this flash resource as an SSD for...
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VSAN Part 9 – Host Failure Scenarios & vSphere HA Interop
In this next post, I will examine some failure scenarios. I will concentrate of ESXi host failures, but suffice to say that a disk or network failure can also have consequences for virtual machines...
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VSAN Part 10 – Changing VM Storage Policy on-the-fly
This is quite a unique aspect of VSAN, and plays directly into what I believe to be one of the crucial factors of software defined storage. Its probably easier to use an example to explain the concept...
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COHO Data – out of stealth today!
There is a new storage vendor on the block – COHO DATA – who just exited stealth and launched their new product with the tag ‘Storage for the Cloud Generation’. I had the opportunity recently to catch...
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VSAN Part 11 – Shutting down the VSAN cluster
In a post on the vSphere blog, I spoke about how to use maintenance mode. As a follow on request, a number of people asked me how they should safely shutdown a VSAN cluster. In this post, I will...
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VSAN Part 14 – Host Memory Requirements
For those of you participating in the VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) beta, this is a reminder that there is a VSAN Design & Sizing Guide available on the community forum. It is part of the Virtual SAN...
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VSAN Part 15 – Multicast Requirement for networking – Misconfiguration detected
This is an issue which has caught a number of customers out during the Virtual SAN beta, so will probably catch some folks out when the product goes live too. One of the requirements for Virtual SAN...
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A closer look at Fusion-io ioControl 3.0
Last week I had the opportunity to catch up with Mike Koponen and Dean Steadman of Fusion-io. I had met with Mike and Dean at VMworld 2013, and spoke to them about the Fusion-io acquisition of NexGen...
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VSAN Part 16 – Reclaiming disks for other uses
A number of customers have raised this question. How do you reclaim disks which were once used by VSAN but you now wish to use these disks for other purposes? Well, first off, if you are using some of...
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VSAN Part 17 – Removing a Disk Group from a Host
Following on from my recent post on how to reclaim disks that were previously used by VSAN, I was asked how one can remove a disk group from a host that is participating in a VSAN cluster. This is...
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A closer look at Bull Storage Solutions
I thought it was about time that I looked at some of the larger storage vendors closer to home. One of these is of course Bull. This company is probably more familiar to those of us based in Europe...
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Getting started with Fusion-io and VSAN
I’ve been having lots of fun lately in my new role in Integration Engineering. It is also good to have someone local once again to bounce ideas off. Right now, that person is Paudie O’Riordan (although...
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VSAN Part 18 – VM Home Namespace and VM Storage Policies
Well, VSAN is finally GA today. Check out Duncan’s blog post which has lots of good links about where to get the GA bits. In this post, I am going to address a question about the VM Home Namespace...
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VSAN Part 19 – Common VSAN Configuration Gotchas
Our team was recently asked to take a VSAN novice through a VSAN deployment, to figure out if there were any configuration gotchas. This post will share the stumbling blocks that you might encounter...
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