While many admins dream of having a fully automatic virtualized data center where the core operations are virtualized and management software is automated, what a majority of admins do have is a bare-bones physical data center without virtualization and running on a physical host. However, it is not always the case. Some admins can now benefit from top-level virtualized data storage solutions.
So if your current data center is using VMware vSAN for distributed data storage and you are struggling with how vSAN works, and its performance and features, this post is for you. This guide aims to provide you with all the information you need to be fully qualified to answer questions regarding vSAN performance, and use cases in practice.
The Basics – Key Features and Benefits of vSAN
Before diving into our vSAN, let’s get a brief background about VMware vSAN. Thus, you will get an idea of how things are arranged inside and what to expect from the solution. VMware vSAN is VMware’s distributed file system designed for storage virtualization. It is a centralized storage infrastructure with data distributed across multiple hosts. Distributed storage refers to a solution that is not located on a single physical host or a centralized storage pool. vSAN provides you with shared storage, which can be accessed from any host in a cluster.
Due to its technical features, vSAN provides you with a whole pack of benefits, such as:
- Data is backed up and can be recovered to any other host in the cluster;
- vSAN is an extension of your physical storage infrastructure that is managed and supported as any other physical SAN/NAS;
- Unlike existing SANs, vSAN does not have a central point of failure (as an example, an unplanned failure of an I/O node causes the data on that node to be lost);
- vSAN is a plug-and-play storage solution. You don’t need to configure the file system or the hosts, and it does not need any management software to function;
- vSAN offers scalability, performance, and high availability;
- vSAN supports file system operations like rename, move, delete, and copy and paste;
- vSAN supports snapshots;
- vSAN integrates with ESXi and vCenter;
- vSAN uses VMware vSphere technology;
- vSAN’s performance is similar to other storage systems;
- vSAN and Storage Policy Based Routing (SPBR).
However, the most important advantage of using vSAN with VMware is that it can be much simpler for you to manage. It has become quite easy to configure vSAN in VMware vSphere and can be done fairly fast.
Let’s say that we have a virtual infrastructure, and there are two options of how we can employ it: to use it on the current hardware infrastructure or migrate it to another infrastructure. In case of migrating, we have to move vCenter, VMs, etc., and this can be a significant problem if you lack the experience.
The easiest and simplest way to migrate virtual machines in vSphere is to use a dedicated plugin. The benefit of this is that it is not necessary to make a complete change in hardware and software. It is enough to change settings, and vSAN can be used with the source and target infrastructure.
vSAN in Practice: How Does It Work?
If the vSAN solution seems to be feasible for you, the following steps will help get you started with it. First, you need to install VMware vSphere in the environment. It comes with a free version, but we recommend that you move up the product ladder for a more flexible and functional version.
Once you are done and select a vSAN version that is scalable enough to meet your expectations, you can go ahead and install the solution. With vSAN, you can implement vSphere-wide HA. You can use it as your SAN solution and virtualize the storage as well, with features such as automatic data backup and recovery, deduplication, compression, etc. What’s more, VMware reveals its vSphere-as-a-service, which is expected to be a true game-changer.
You can create a vSAN storage cluster and configure the required components to build a basic storage cluster. Finally, you can manage the cluster from a vSphere perspective. All these are fairly easy to perform and do not require any special qualifications.
What Is vSAN Good for?
VMware vSAN is good for virtualizing storage, especially with the advent of big data. With VM-based storage and storage pools, it is possible to consolidate storage and create one large pool, making storage more available to multiple VMs. VMware vSAN provides an automated and intelligent platform that monitors the entire infrastructure in real-time. VMware vSAN will automatically detect problems, resolve issues and recommend actions, making it a very powerful product. It is for this reason that vSAN is a preferred data storage solution among many different companies.