Essential Virtual SAN (VSAN): Administrator’s Guide to VMware® Virtual SAN

Essential Virtual SAN (VSAN): Administrator’s Guide to VMware® Virtual SAN

by Cormac Hogan, Duncan Epping
Released July 2014
Publisher(s): VMware Press
ISBN: 9780133855036

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Book description

Understand and implement VMware Virtual SAN: the heart of tomorrow’s Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC)

VMware’s breakthrough Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) initiative can help you virtualize your entire datacenter: compute, storage, networks, and associated services. Central to SDDC is VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN): a fully distributed storage architecture seamlessly integrated into the hypervisor and capable of scaling to meet any enterprise storage requirement.

Now, the leaders of VMware’s wildly popular Virtual SAN previews have written the first authoritative guide to this pivotal technology. You’ll learn what Virtual SAN is, exactly what it offers, how to implement it, and how to maximize its value.

Writing for administrators, consultants, and architects, Cormac Hogan and Duncan Epping show how Virtual SAN implements both object-based storage and a policy platform that simplifies VM storage placement. You’ll learn how Virtual SAN and vSphere work together to dramatically improve resiliency, scale-out storage functionality, and control over QoS.

Both an up-to-the-minute reference and hands-on tutorial, Essential Virtual SAN uses realistic examples to demonstrate Virtual SAN’s most powerful capabilities. You’ll learn how to plan, architect, and deploy Virtual SAN successfully, avoid gotchas, and troubleshoot problems once you’re up and running.

Coverage includes

  • Understanding the key goals and concepts of Software-Defined Storage and Virtual SAN technology

  • Meeting physical and virtual requirements for safe Virtual SAN implementation

  • Installing and configuring Virtual SAN for your unique environment

  • Using Storage Policy Based Management to control availability, performance, and reliability

  • Simplifying deployment with VM Storage Policies

  • Discovering key Virtual SAN architectural details: caching I/O, VASA, witnesses, pass-through RAID, and more

  • Ensuring efficient day-to-day Virtual SAN management and maintenance

  • Interoperating with other VMware features and products

  • Designing and sizing Virtual SAN clusters

  • Troubleshooting, monitoring, and performance optimization

    • Table of contents

    1. About This eBook
    2. Title Page
    3. Copyright Page
    4. Dedication Page
    5. Contents
    6. Foreword by Ben Fathi
    7. Foreword by Charles Fan
    8. About the Authors
    9. About the Technical Reviewers
    10. Acknowledgments
    11. We Want to Hear from You!
    12. Reader Services
    13. Introduction
      1. Motivation for Writing This Book
      2. You, the Reader
      3. How to Use This Book
    14. Chapter 1. Introduction to VSAN
      1. Software-Defined Datacenter
      2. Software-Defined Storage
      3. Hyper-Convergence/Server SAN Solutions
      4. Introducing Virtual SAN
      5. What Is Virtual SAN?
      6. What Does VSAN Look Like to an Administrator?
      7. Summary
    15. Chapter 2. VSAN Prerequisites and Requirements for Deployment
      1. VMware vSphere 5.5
      2. VSAN Requirements
      3. Network Requirements
      4. Summary
    16. Chapter 3. VSAN Installation and Configuration
      1. VSAN Networking
      2. VMkernel Network for VSAN
      3. VSAN Network Configuration: VMware Standard Switch
      4. VSAN Network Configuration: vSphere Distributed Switch
      5. Possible Network Configuration Issues
      6. Network I/O Control Configuration Example
      7. Design Considerations: Distributed Switch and Network I/O Control
      8. Creating a VSAN Cluster
      9. The Role of Disk Groups
      10. Summary
    17. Chapter 4. VM Storage Policies on VSAN
      1. Introducing Storage Policy-Based Management in a VSAN Environment
      2. VASA Vendor Provider
      3. VSAN Storage Providers: Highly Available
      4. VM Storage Policies
      5. Summary
    18. Chapter 5. Architectural Details
      1. Distributed RAID
      2. Objects and Components
      3. VSAN Software Components
      4. On-Disk Formats
      5. VSAN I/O Flow
      6. Storage Policy-Based Management
      7. VSAN Capabilities
      8. Summary
    19. Chapter 6. VM Storage Policies and Virtual Machine Provisioning
      1. Policy Setting: Number of Failures to Tolerate = 1
      2. Policy Setting: Failures to Tolerate = 1, Stripe Width = 2
      3. Policy Setting: Failures to Tolerate = 2, Stripe Width = 2
      4. Policy Setting: Failures to Tolerate = 1, Object Space Reservation = 50 Percent
      5. Policy Setting: Failures to Tolerate = 1, Object Space Reservation = 100 Percent
      6. Default Policy
      7. Summary
    20. Chapter 7. Management and Maintenance
      1. Host Management
      2. Maintenance Mode
      3. Disk Management
      4. Wiping a Disk
      5. Failure Scenarios
      6. Thin Provisioning Considerations
      7. vCenter Management
      8. Summary
    21. Chapter 8. Interoperability
      1. vMotion
      2. Storage vMotion
      3. vSphere HA
      4. Distributed Resource Scheduler
      5. Storage DRS
      6. Storage I/O Control
      7. Distributed Power Management
      8. VMware Data Protection
      9. vSphere Replication
      10. Virtual Machine Snapshots
      11. vCloud Director
      12. VMware Horizon View
      13. vCenter Operations
      14. vSphere 5.5 62TB VMDK
      15. Fault Tolerance
      16. Stretched/vSphere Metro Storage Cluster
      17. PowerCLI
      18. C# Client
      19. vCloud Automation Service
      20. Host Profiles
      21. Auto-Deploy
      22. Raw Device Mappings
      23. vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration
      24. Microsoft Clustering Services
      25. Summary
    22. Chapter 9. Designing a VSAN Cluster
      1. Sizing Constraints
      2. Failures to Tolerate = 1, Stripe Width = 1
      3. Flash to Magnetic Disk Ratio
      4. Designing for Performance
      5. VSAN Performance Capabilities
      6. Design and Sizing Tools
      7. Scenario 1: Where to Start
      8. Scenario 2
      9. Scenario 3
      10. Summary
    23. Chapter 10. Troubleshooting, Monitoring, and Performance
      1. ESXCLI
      2. Ruby vSphere Console
      3. VSAN and SPBM APIs
      4. Troubleshooting VSAN on the ESXi
      5. Performance Monitoring
      6. Sample VSAN Observer Use Case
      7. Summary
    24. Index

    Product information

    • Title: Essential Virtual SAN (VSAN): Administrator’s Guide to VMware® Virtual SAN
    • Author(s): Cormac Hogan, Duncan Epping
    • Release date: July 2014
    • Publisher(s): VMware Press
    • ISBN: 9780133855036