Cisco UCS Blades Powered by VMware vSAN [blogs.vmware.com]
Today, we are pleased to announce the much awaited support for VMware vSAN on Cisco UCS blade as an All-Flash ReadyNode. This enables a new vSAN blade platform on Cisco in addition to a number of vSAN Ready Nodes already supported on the UCS C-Series rackmount servers.
Debunking some behavior “myths” in 3 node vSAN cluster [cormachogan.com]
I recently noticed a blog post describing some very strange behaviors in 2-node and 3-node vSAN clusters. I was especially concerned to read that when they introduced a failure and then fixed that failure, they did not experience any auto-recovery. I have reached out to the authors of the post, just to check out some things such as version of vSAN, type of failure, etc. Unfortunately I haven’t had a response as yet, but I did feel compelled to put the record straight. In the following post, I am going to introduce a variety of operations and failures in my 3-node cluster, and show you exactly how things are supposed to behave. I will look at maintenance mode behavior, network failure and a flash device failure. Please forgive some of the…Read More
vSAN Got a 2.5x Performance Increase: Thank You Intel Optane! [blogs.vmware.com]
Today, March 19th Intel announced the Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X—the first flash device built on the much-anticipated 3D XPoint technology. This is exciting news for vSAN customers, since—as a result of Intel and VMware’s active collaboration—we are pleased to offer day 1 support of vSAN 6.5 and ESXi 6.5 with the Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X. This is the first Intel Optane NVMe drive (375GB) to be made available with more coming soon (750GB and 1.5TB).
New Mechanism for Unleashing vSAN Innovation [blogs.vmware.com]
A major advantage of vSAN is that it is natively integrated with vSphere—in fact it’s the only vSphere-embedded storage solution available! As a result of this architecture customers benefit from management simplicity, high performance and a natural way to evolve to HCI. But up to now, that tight relationship also meant that vSAN releases were only available tied to major vSphere updates.
Take the plunge into HCI – Run a simple vSAN Assessment! [blogs.vmware.com]
Hyper-converged infrastructure has quickly become the hottest topic in the data center modernization journey. However, many customers are still evaluating how to best assess their HCI needs. Fear not! A very simple and quick vSAN Assessment may provide you the answer.
Fix orphaned vSAN objects [ivobeerens.nl]
From the vSphere Web Client you cannot manage orphaned vSAN objects . To check and fix orphaned vSAN objects, the Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) is needed. The ‘vsan.check_state’ command checks if VMs and Virtual SAN objects are valid and accessible.
[Online Event] Modernize Your IT with vSAN Innovations
IT Mgrs: Ready to accelerate your digital transformation with the latest vSAN innovations? Sign up for our free, 90-minute webcast on 4/11 and hear from executives and experts on how vSAN can help scale to modern business needs:
Introducing the new VMware vSAN 6.5 Hands-on Lab! Give it a try today:
Explore new features like iSCSI Target, PowerCLI and more in vSAN 6.5.
Intel Optane the new benchmark SSD to beat [michaelryom.dk]
For a very long time Intel 3700 series of SSDs has held the crown as the best all round SSD for the enterprise market. Intel did something special with this line of SSDs. They stop talking IOPS and latency at least as the main focus and started focusing on where it really would hurt mainstream storage vendors. What was new was QoS or consistency and power loss protection. These features are enterprise graded. Many vendors will claim that they have power loss protection, but non-like Intel did and even today, you have to understand the vendor’s power loss protection in order to validate if it is any good for your needs. This of course was not what hit most medias covering the SSD market. What Intel really changed here was the QoS you…Read More
Sizing for large VMDKs on vSAN [cormachogan.com]
I’ve recently been involved in some design and sizing for very large VMDKs on vSAN. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when doing this, not just the overhead when deciding to go with RAID1, RAID5 or RAID6, but also what this means for component counts. In the following post, I have done a few tests with some rather large RAID-5 and RAID-6 VMDKs, just to show you how we deal with it in vSAN. If you are involved in designing and sizing vSANs for large virtual machines, you might find this interesting.
New Mechanism for Unleashing vSAN Innovation [blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks]
A major advantage of vSAN is that it is natively integrated with vSphere—in fact it’s the only vSphere-embedded storage solution available! As a result of this architecture customers benefit from management simplicity, high performance and a natural way to evolve to HCI. But up to now, that tight relationship also meant that vSAN releases were only available tied to major vSphere updates.
VMware vSAN First HCI To Support Intel Optane [storagereview.com]
Intel launched its first Optane-based product for the enterprise last week, the Optane SSD DC P4800X series. Summarizing of the technical details, the P4800X in its first incarnation is a 375GB SSD in an add-in-card form factor. Software defined solutions like VMware vSAN are uniquely qualified to take full advantage of this new technology, as they’re already architected to leverage advancements in hardware. VMware has done just that, offering launch support in both ESXi 6.5 and vSAN 6.5.
Intel Optane support for vSAN, first HCI solution to deliver it [yellow-bricks.com]
I am in Australia this week for the Sydney and Melbourne VMUG UserCon’s. Had a bunch of meetings yesterday and this morning the news was dropped that Intel Optane support was released for vSAN. The performance claims look great, 2.5x more IOPS and 2.5x less latency. (I don’t know the test specifics yet.) On top of that, Optane typically has a higher endurance rating, meaning that the device can incur a lot more writes, which makes it an ideal device for the vSAN caching layer.
Nuclear subs seek virtual SAN, says VMware [theregister.co.uk]
VSAN may get a gig on UK’s Astute-class boats. And is definitely getting a filesystem
vSAN Sparse Swap [greatwhitetec.com]
Although this is not a new feature, it still seems to be a little known feature by many that can save you quite a bit of disk space.
vSAN Got a 2.5x Performance Increase: Thank You Intel Optane! [blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks]
Today, March 19th Intel announced the Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X—the first flash device built on the much-anticipated 3D XPoint technology. This is exciting news for vSAN customers, since—as a result of Intel and VMware’s active collaboration—we are pleased to offer day 1 support of vSAN 6.5 and ESXi 6.5 with the Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X. This is the first Intel Optane NVMe drive (375GB) to be made available with more coming soon (750GB and 1.5TB).
vSAN stretched cluster topology explained [justait.net]
VMware vSAN 6.2 Stretched Cluster & 2 Node Guide covers greatly all the network topologies supported and the configuration steps involved on setting up such solution, but the guide does not detail some network aspects which could pass unnoticed and cause some issues down the road in case you did not consider them during design phase.
VxRail and Pivotal Cloud Foundry [Virtual Blocks]
This is VxRail a HCIA, Hyper Converged Infrastructure Appliance. VxRail is an appliance, that decreases the complexity of management of your compute and storage. The daily experience is simplified but at the same time offers a powerful and agile solution that can grow as you need it to.
The Basics of vSAN Facebook Live TechTalk with Jase McCarty
During the 10 minute live stream, Jase will: In-Kernel – vSAN vs VSA Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) Fault Domains and how they are valuable & important in HCI
What You Can (and Cannot) Change in a vSAN ReadyNode™ [Virtual Blocks]
vSAN has taken the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) market by storm and more than 7,000 customers have now adopted vSAN with thousands of deployments, confirming its position as the leading product in hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).
