Skip to main content

What is VMware vSAN

 🚀 Part 1: What is VMware vSAN?


VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage solution built right into ESXi.

Instead of relying on external SAN/NAS, it combines local disks from hosts into a shared datastore for the cluster.


✨ Why it matters:

 • 🗑️ No need for external arrays

 • ⚡ High performance with SSD/NVMe

 • 📈 Scale just by adding hosts

 • 🎛️ Managed directly in vSphere


⸻


🔎 Architecture & Building Blocks

At the heart of vSAN are a few simple components:

 • 🖥️ ESXi Hosts → Each host contributes local disks

 • 🖴 Disk Groups → Made of cache (SSD) + capacity (HDD/SSD)

 • 📦 vSAN Datastore → Pooled storage, visible to all hosts

 • 📋 Storage Policies → Decide availability, replication, and performance per VM


💡 This architecture means your storage is flexible, policy-driven, and fully integrated with VMware’s ecosystem.


⸻


👉 Best Practice: Start small with 3–4 hosts, but always design for growth — vSAN scales linearly by simply adding more servers.


⚙️ Part 2: How vSAN Works + Use Cases


Each ESXi host adds its local disks → vSAN mirrors/stripes data across nodes → you get performance + resilience.


🔧 Core Components:

 • 🖴 Cache Tier → SSDs for speed

 • 💽 Capacity Tier → HDDs/SSDs for storage

 • 📋 Storage Policies → Decide replication & performance per VM


📌 Use Cases:

 • 🖥️ Virtual Desktops (VDI)

 • 🗄️ Databases & ERP

 • 🌍 Edge/Remote sites

 • 🌐 Disaster Recovery (stretched clusters)


👉 Best Practice: Go all-flash for speed, and enable deduplication & compression for efficiency.


💡 Part 3: Why Choose vSAN?


VMware vSAN is more than just storage – it’s a business enabler.

While traditional SAN/NAS solutions need separate hardware, cables, and management, vSAN is built into the hypervisor and scales with your compute layer.


⸻


🔥 Top Advantages of vSAN:

 • 💰 Cost Efficiency → No external storage arrays, fewer vendors to manage

 • ⚡ Fast Deployment → Storage ready in minutes, provisioned directly from vSphere

 • 🎯 Policy-Based Management → Define per-VM policies (availability, performance, protection)

 • ☁️ Cloud Integration → Native part of VMware Cloud Foundation & hybrid cloud strategies

 • 📈 Scalability → Expand by simply adding ESXi hosts

 • 🛡️ Data Protection → Features like RAID 1/5/6, stretched clusters, and fault domains


⸻


🔎 Real-World Impact

 • 🏢 Enterprises → Simplify storage ops and cut datacenter costs

 • 🌍 Remote/Edge Sites → Eliminate the need for complex SAN gear

 • ☁️ Hybrid Cloud Users → Extend on-prem vSAN to VMware Cloud seamlessly


⸻


👉 Best Practice:

 • Use 10GbE (or higher) dedicated networks for vSAN traffic.

 • Continuously monitor with vSAN Health Check & Skyline for proactive issue detection.

 • Align storage policies with business SLAs — not all workloads need the same level of redundancy.


⸻


⚡ In short: VMware vSAN simplifies infrastructure, reduces costs, and makes organizations cloud-ready — all while being managed from the same vSphere platform you already know.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  Issue with Aria Automation Custom form Multi Value Picker and Data Grid https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleNumber=345960 Products VMware Aria Suite Issue/Introduction Symptoms: Getting  error " Expected Type String but was Object ", w hen trying to use Complex Types in MultiValue Picker on the Aria for Automation Custom Form. Environment VMware vRealize Automation 8.x Cause This issue has been identified where the problem appears when a single column Multi Value Picker or Data Grid is used. Resolution This is a known issue. There is a workaround.  Workaround: As a workaround, try adding one empty column in the Multivalue picker without filling the options. So we can add one more column without filling the value which will be hidden(there is a button in the designer page that will hide the column). This way the end user will receive the same view.  
Post a Comment
Read more

57 Tips Every Admin Should Know

Active Directory 1. To quickly list all the groups in your domain, with members, run this command: dsquery group -limit 0 | dsget group -members –expand 2. To find all users whose accounts are set to have a non-expiring password, run this command: dsquery * domainroot -filter “(&(objectcategory=person)(objectclass=user)(lockoutTime=*))” -limit 0 3. To list all the FSMO role holders in your forest, run this command: netdom query fsmo 4. To refresh group policy settings, run this command: gpupdate 5. To check Active Directory replication on a domain controller, run this command: repadmin /replsummary 6. To force replication from a domain controller without having to go through to Active Directory Sites and Services, run this command: repadmin /syncall 7. To see what server authenticated you (or if you logged on with cached credentials) you can run either of these commands: set l echo %logonserver% 8. To see what account you are logged on as, run this command: ...
Post a Comment
Read more
  The Guardrails of Automation VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 has redefined private cloud automation. With full-stack automation powered by Ansible and orchestrated through vRealize Orchestrator (vRO), and version-controlled deployments driven by GitOps and CI/CD pipelines, teams can build infrastructure faster than ever. But automation without guardrails is a recipe for risk Enter RBAC and policy enforcement. This third and final installment in our automation series focuses on how to secure and govern multi-tenant environments in VCF 9.0 with role-based access control (RBAC) and layered identity management. VCF’s IAM Foundation VCF 9.x integrates tightly with enterprise identity providers, enabling organizations to define and assign roles using existing Active Directory (AD) groups. With its persona-based access model, administrators can enforce strict boundaries across compute, storage, and networking resources: Personas : Global Admin, Tenant Admin, Contributor, Viewer Projec...
Post a Comment
Read more