Getting Started with VMware Virtual SAN

Getting Started with VMware Virtual SAN

by Cedric Rajendran
Released May 2015
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781784399252

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Book description

Build optimal, high-performance, and resilient software-defined storage on VSAN for your vSphere infrastructure

In Detail

Virtual SAN is without a doubt the latest fad in the virtualization arena. The best part about VSAN solutions is the fact that a near-Flash performance is achieved with only a marginal percentage of Flash storage. And all this without noticeably compromising vSphere's exquisite feature set and its interoperability with other products from VMware.

This book covers the fundamental aspects of software-defined storage, including its evolution and its role in a software-defined data center. You will gain a complete understanding of VMware Virtual SAN architecture, its components, and how it is put together. The sizing and profiling of virtual machines are also covered in detail. The book explores your options in choosing the type of Virtual SAN and deploys a simple setup that will demonstrate the workflow of a VSAN deployment.

What You Will Learn

  • Understand what software-defined storage is and how it is implemented through VMware Virtual SAN
  • Install, configure, and administer VSAN
  • Architect VSAN to cater to your specific business requirements
  • Define storage tiering at the software layer by implementing storage policy-based management
  • Understand how every I/O flows through the VSAN infrastructure
  • Monitor your VSAN infrastructure to discover issues at an early stage
  • Efficiently use utilities to troubleshoot and fix issues

Table of contents

  1. Getting Started with VMware Virtual SAN
    1. Table of Contents
    2. Getting Started with VMware Virtual SAN
    3. Credits
    4. About the Author
    5. About the Reviewers
    6. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
        1. Why subscribe?
        2. Free access for Packt account holders
        3. Instant updates on new Packt books
    7. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Downloading the example code
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    8. 1. An Introduction to Software-defined Storage and VSAN
      1. What is a Software-defined Data Center?
      2. The significance of Software-defined Storage
      3. The storage choices and form factors of Software-defined Storage
        1. Traditional storage
        2. Software-based storage
        3. Hyper-converged solutions
      4. An introduction to VMware Virtual SAN
      5. Summary
    9. 2. Understanding Virtual SAN
      1. Why should I use VSAN?
      2. What is VSAN?
        1. Building blocks of VSAN
          1. Disk groups
          2. VMFS-L
          3. Storage Policy-based Management
      3. Where do I start? Back to the drawing board
        1. Software requirements
        2. Disk boot device
          1. Local storage and boot from SAN
          2. USB and SD card as boot devices
        3. Disk controller
        4. Disk flash devices
        5. Magnetic disks
        6. Network requirements
      4. Some simpler options
        1. Virtual SAN ready nodes
        2. EVO: RAIL
      5. Summary
    10. 3. Workload Profiling and Sizing
      1. Capacity planning guidelines
        1. Profiling workloads
        2. Virtual SAN sizing utility
      2. Virtual SAN shapes and sizes
        1. Custom built
        2. VSAN ready nodes
        3. EVO: RAIL
          1. VMware guidelines for sizing and assumptions
      3. Summary
    11. 4. Getting Started with VSAN – Installation and Configuration
      1. Key concepts
        1. Disk groups
        2. Virtual SAN network
      2. Prerequisite checklist
      3. Installation workflow
      4. Hardware specifications
      5. Server node
      6. Cluster layout
      7. Network layout
      8. Setting up a VSAN cluster
      9. VSAN ready nodes – installation
      10. Summary
    12. 5. Truly Software-defined, Policy-based Management
      1. Why do we need policies?
        1. Understanding SPBM
        2. VSAN datastore capabilities
          1. Accessing the VSAN datastore capabilities
          2. Number of disk stripes per object
          3. Number of failures to tolerate
            1. Scenario based examples
              1. Scenario 1
              2. Scenario 2
              3. Scenario 3
          4. Flash read cache reservation
          5. Force provisioning
          6. Object space reservation
        3. Under the hood – SBPM
          1. vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness
          2. Managing Virtual SAN storage providers
      2. Summary
    13. 6. Architecture Overview
      1. Why such an architecture?
      2. Anatomy of I/O
        1. Write buffer
        2. Destaging data to a magnetic disk
        3. The read cache
          1. The READ I/O workflow
      3. Objects, components, and witnesses
        1. What is an object?
          1. A swap object
          2. The virtual machine home namespace
          3. Virtual disks and snapshot delta-disks
        2. Components
        3. A witness
        4. Connecting the dots
      4. Internal building blocks of VSAN
        1. Reliable datagram transport
        2. Cluster monitoring, membership, and directory services
        3. Cluster level object manager
        4. The distributed object manager
          1. The local log structured object manager
      5. VSAN and high availability
        1. A magnetic disk failure
        2. A flash device failure
        3. A host failure
      6. Summary
    14. 7. Design Considerations and Guidelines
      1. Network optimizations
        1. Jumbo frames
        2. Speed of the network interface
        3. Network IO control
          1. Isolation, shares, and limits
          2. Quality of Service
      2. Storage configuration optimizations
        1. A flash device
        2. Magnetic disks
          1. I/O controllers
          2. Cache-to-capacity ratio
            1. Capacity
            2. Performance
            3. Availability
      3. A scale-out design
      4. Backing up your VSAN workloads
        1. Creating a local backup through VDP
        2. Creating a local backup to VMFS/NFS through VDP
        3. Creating a remote backup through VDP
        4. vSphere Replication to protect VSAN
      5. Summary
    15. 8. Troubleshooting and Monitoring Utilities for Virtual SAN
      1. Troubleshooting workflow
        1. Validating the hardware and configuration limit
          1. Understanding the software components of VSAN
            1. The log structured object manager
            2. The distributed object manager
            3. Cluster monitoring, membership, and directory services
          2. The ESXCLI namespace
            1. Datastore
            2. Network
            3. Storage
            4. Cluster
            5. Policy
            6. Other useful namespaces
              1. esxcli vsan maintenancemode
              2. esxcli vsan trace
              3. cmmds-tool
              4. vdq
          3. Ruby vSphere Console
            1. Manoeuvring around RVC
            2. Command-line options with RVC
              1. Enabling and disabling VSAN
              2. Disk-related commands
              3. Viewing the virtual machine layout
              4. Viewing the physical disk layout
                1. cmmds_find
                2. resync.dashboard
          4. VSAN Observer
            1. Monitoring live statistics
            2. Offline diagnosis
            3. Interpreting VSOB data and key metrics
      2. Summary
    16. 9. What's New in VSAN 6.0?
      1. VSAN architecture types
        1. Hybrid VSAN
        2. All-flash VSAN
        3. Disk group creation for an all-flash setup
          1. Tagging flash capacity devices through ESXCLI
          2. Tagging flash capacity devices through Ruby vSphere Client
          3. Validation
          4. Points to remember with all-flash VSAN
      2. The new on-disk format
        1. Snapshot enhancements
      3. The fault domain
      4. JBOD support
      5. Serviceability improvements
        1. LED locators
        2. A what-if scenario
        3. The rebalance operation
      6. Scalability
      7. Summary
    17. Index

Product information

  • Title: Getting Started with VMware Virtual SAN
  • Author(s): Cedric Rajendran
  • Release date: May 2015
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781784399252