In the spirit of everything VSAN, I have decided to compile a list of all the deep dive resources and tutorials that I can find into a single blog post. This is a work in progress, so it won’t be comprehensive for a while.
Slide Decks
Technical blog posts from Cormac Hogan
- VSAN Part 1 – A first look at VSAN
- VSAN Part 2 – What do you need to get started?
- VSAN Part 3 – It is not a Virtual Storage Appliance
- VSAN Part 4 – Understanding Objects and Components
- VSAN Part 5 – The role of VASA
- VSAN Part 6 – Manual or Automatic Mode
- VSAN Part 7 – Capabilities and VM Storage Policies
- VSAN Part 8 – The role of the SSD
- VSAN Part 9 – Host Failure Scenarios and vSphere HA interop
- VSAN Part 10 – Changing VM Storage Policy on-the-fly
- VSAN Part 11 – Shutting down the VSAN Cluster
- VSAN Part 12 – SPBM Extensions in RVC
- VSAN Part 13 – Examining the .vswp object
- VSAN Part 14 – Host Memory Requirements
- VSAN Part 15 – Multicast Requirement – Misconfiguration detected
- VSAN Part 16 – Reclaiming disks for other uses
- VSAN Part 17 – Removing a disk group from a host
- VSAN Announcement Review
- Getting started with Fusion-io and VSAN
- VSAN Part 18 – VM Home Namespace and VM Storage Policies
- VSAN Part 19 – Common Configuration Gotchas
- VSAN and vSphere Replication interoperability
- VSAN and vSphere Data Protection interoperability
- VSAN and Horizon View Interoperability
- VSAN Part 20 – VM Swap and VM Storage Policies
- VSAN Part 21 – What is a witness?
- VSAN and vCenter Operations Manager interoperability
The Essential Virtual SAN book
VSAN video feed
Cisco UCS Solution with VMware Virtual SAN™ (VSAN) (VMware TV) http://bit.ly/1e5Ww3Z
Virtual SAN Ready System – Recommended Configurations
http://partnerweb.vmware.com/programs/vsan/VMW-VIRTUAL-SAN-RDY-NODE-RDY-BLK-v1.0.pdf
- Introduction to VMware vSphere Virtual SAN (Duncan Epping)
- Testing vSphere Virtual SAN in your virtual lab with vSphere 5.5 (Duncan Epping)
- VMware vSphere Virtual SAN design considerations (Duncan Epping)
- How do you know where an object is located with Virtual SAN? (Duncan Epping)
- Frequently asked questions about Virtual SAN / VSAN (Duncan Epping)
- How VSAN handles a disk or host failure (Duncan Epping)
- Isolation / Partition scenario with VSAN cluster, how is this handled? (Duncan Epping)
- Be careful when defining a VM storage policy for VSAN (Duncan Epping)
- Initialized disks to be used by VSAN task completed successfully, but no disks added?(Duncan Epping)
- I created a folder on my VSAN Datastore, but how do I delete it? (Duncan Epping)
- Virtual SAN and Data Locality/Gravity (Duncan Epping)
- Designing your hardware for Virtual SAN (Duncan Epping)
- Stripe segments and write acknowledgements (pretty pictures friday) (Duncan Epping)
- How to configure the Virtual SAN observer for monitoring/troubleshooting (Duncan Epping)
- 4 is the minimum number of hosts for VSAN if you ask me (Duncan Epping)
- Virtual SAN and Network IO Control (Duncan Epping)
- vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using Virtual SAN, can I do it? (Duncan Epping)
- VSAN and Network IO Control / VDS part 2 (Duncan Epping)
- VSAN performance: many SAS low capacity VS some SATA high capacity? (Duncan Epping)
- Virtual SAN and maintenance windows… (Duncan Epping)
- Removing a disk group from a VSAN host (Duncan Epping)
- Re: VMware VSAN VS the simplicity of hyperconvergence (Duncan Epping)
- What happens in a VSAN cluster in the case of an SSD failure? (Duncan Epping)
- How to remove a host from your Virtual SAN cluster (Duncan Epping)
- How to calculate what your Virtual SAN datastore size should be (Duncan Epping)
- Virtual SAN Read IO – cache / buffer / spindles (Duncan Epping)
- Virtual SAN Datastore Sizing Calculator (Duncan Epping)
- Building a hyper-converged platform using VMware technology part 1 (Duncan Epping)
- Building a hyper-converged platform using VMware technology part 2 (Duncan Epping)
- Veeam Community Podcast 97 #VSAN – Explain it to me! (Duncan Epping, Rick Vanover)
- Virtual SAN Compatibility Guide updated! (Duncan Epping)
- vSphere HA and VMs per Datastore limit! (Duncan Epping)
- VMware Virtual SAN launch and book pre-announcement! (Duncan Epping)
- Virtual SAN GA update: Flash vs Magnetic Disk ratio (Duncan Epping)
- Virtual SAN GA aka vSphere 5.5 Update 1 (Duncan Epping)
- Rebuilding your Virtual SAN Lab? Wipe the disks first! (Duncan Epping)
- Building a hyper-converged platform using VMware technology part 3 (Duncan Epping)
- VSAN – The spoken reality (Duncan Epping)
- VSAN – The unspoken truth (Maish)
- VSAN – The unspoken future (Christian)
- VSAN HCL more than VSAN-ready nodes (Duncan Epping)
- VSAN Basics – Changing a VM’s storage policy (Duncan Epping)
- Selecting a disk controller for VSAN using the HCL (Duncan Epping)
- VSAN – Misconfiguration Detected (Duncan Epping)
- VSAN for ROBO? (Duncan Epping)
- How to quickly setup and test VSAN using Nested ESXi (William Lam)
- How to bootstrap vCenter Server onto a single VSAN node Part 1? (William Lam)
- Additional steps required to completely disable VSAN on ESXi host (William Lam)
- How to run Nested ESXi on top of a VSAN datastore? (William Lam)
- Restoring VSAN VM Storage Policies without vCenter part 1 (William Lam)
- Restoring VSAN VM Storage Policies without vCenter Part 2: Using vSphere API (William Lam)
- VMware VSAN APIs (William Lam)
- vdq – A useful little VSAN utility (William Lam)
- How to upgrade to the latest VSAN Beta Refresh of RVC on Windows? (William Lam)
- Why you should rename the default VSAN Datastore name (William Lam)
- Required ESXi advanced setting to support 16+ node VSAN Cluster (William Lam)
- Exploring VSAN APIs Part 1 – Enable VSAN Cluster (William Lam)
- Exploring VSAN APIs Part 2 – Query available SSDs (William Lam)
- Exploring VSAN APIs Part 3 – Enable VSAN Traffic Type (William Lam)
- Exploring VSAN APIs Part 4 – VSAN Disk Mappings (William Lam)
- Exploring VSAN APIs Part 5 – VSAN Host Status (William Lam)
- Re: Host is in a VSAN enabled cluster but does not have VSAN service enabled (William Lam)
- Exploring VSAN APIs Part 6 – Modifying Virtual Machine VM Storage Policy (William Lam)
- Quick Tip: Increasing capacity on a Nested VSAN Datastore (William Lam)
- Quick Tip – Don’t always assume your local HDs will be claimed correctly (William Lam)
- Exploring VSAN APIs Part 7 – VSAN Datastore Folder Management (William Lam)
- VSAN Configuration Maximum Query Script (William Lam)
- Exploring VSAN APIs Part 8 – Maintenance Mode (William Lam)
- VSAN vCheck Plugins (William Lam)
- –
- Don’t buy into the over-config’d VSAN (Ron Ogblesby)
- –
- Creating a VSAN Cluster with PowerCLI (Alan Renouf)
- –
- Why is Content-Based Read Cache (CBRC) so important for Horizon View and VSAN?(Andre Leibovici)
- How is Horizon View configured for VMware VSAN? (Andre Leibovici)
- How does VMware VSAN help Horizon View? (Andre Leibovici)
- –
- vSphere 5.5: vSphere Ruby Console (Rawlinson Rivera)
- vSphere 5.5: Using RVC VSAN Observer Part 1 (Rawlinson Rivera)
- vSphere 5.5: Using RVC VSAN Observer Part 2 (Rawlinson Rivera)
- –
- Using the VSAN Observer in vCenter 5.5 (Erik Bussink)
- VSAN Observer showing Degraded status… (Erik Bussink)
- VSAN.INFO – All about VSAN Homelabs (Erik Bussink)
- VSAN Community HCL (Erik Bussink)
- –
- Manage VSAN with RVC Part 1 – Basic Configuration Tasks (Florian Grehl)
- Manage VSAN with RVC Part 2 – VSAN Cluster Administration (Florian Grehl)
- Manage VSAN with RVC Part 3 – Object Management (Florian Grehl)
- Manage VSAN with RVC Part 4 – Troubleshooting (Florian Grehl)
- Manage VSAN with RVC Part 5 – Observer (Florian Grehl)
- –
- VDI Benchmarking Using View Planner on VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) (Banit Agrawal)
- VDI Benchmarking Using View Planner on VMware Virtual SAN – Part 2 (Banit Agrawal)
- VDI Benchmarking Using View Planner on VMware Virtual SAN – Part 3 (Banit Agrawal)
- VDI Performance Benchmarking on VMware Virtual SAN 5.5 GA (Banit Agrawal)
- –
- Configuring VSAN on a Dell Poweredge VRTX (Christian Mohn)
- –
- VMware VSAN meets EZLAB (Jad El-Zein)
- Using VSAN Storage Policies in vCloud Automation Center (Jad El-Zein)
- –
- VSAN Capacity and VMDK Placement (Viktor van den Berg)
- –
- My completely ridiculous VSAN test (Nested performance test) (Gabrie van Zanten)
- –
- Virtual SAN Hardware Guidance Part 1 – Solid State Drives (Wade Holmes / vSphere Blog)
- Virtual SAN Hardware Guidance Part II – Storage Controllers (Wade Holmes / vSphere Blog)
- How to Supercharge your Virtual SAN Cluster (2 Million IOPS!!!) (Wade Holmes / vSphere Blog)
Official VMware Collateral:
- Virtual SAN proof of concept kit
- Virtual SAN technical white paper
- Virtual SAN Design & Sizing Guide
- Virtual SAN Quick Monitoring and Troubleshooting Guide
- Virtual SAN Datasheet
- –
- VSAN and FusionIO reference architecture
- –
- Webinar: VSAN – Introduction and Overview — Presentation and Recording
- Webinar: Install, Configure — Presentation and Recording
- Webinar: Monitoring — Presentation and Recording
- Webinar: Troubleshooting — Recording
- Webinar: Virtual SAN and EUC Use Cases — Presentation and Recording
- Webinar: Best Practices with the Performance Team — Presentation and Recording
- Podcast: VSAN VSAN VSAN
- VSAN Walkthrough Product Demos
- –
- VMworld 2013 Session: STO5391 – VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN)
FAQ
Q: How to correctly size for Flash capacity?
R: It’s about 10% of anticipated consumed storage capacity. There is a good screenshot I can share, with an example:
Q: Is 10Gb connectivity for VSAN traffic required?
R: No, but highly recommended, as during rebuilds (if some component has failure) the VSAN traffic will flow through the 1GbE and the link might get saturated.
Q: The vSphere Distributed Switch offer is only to be used on VSAN clusters, right?
R: Yes, when activating the VSAN licensing option, there will be option to use VDS.
Q: Where can I find some ready nodes config document
R: There is a PDF document on the VMware partner site which you can download here. There are Dell, Cisco, Supermicro, IBM ready nodes present, as for now.
Links:
- Check the VSAN Design and Sizing Guide.
KB Articles:
Configs and requirements:
- vSphere 5.5 Virtual SAN requirements (2058424)
- Adding additional hosts to an existing Virtual SAN cluster (2059936)
- Adding a host back to a Virtual SAN cluster after an ESXi host rebuild (2059091)
- Storing ESXi coredump and scratch partitions in Virtual SAN (2074026)
- Configuring Virtual SAN VMkernel networking (2058368)
- Retaining virtual machines of Virtual SAN Beta cluster when upgrading to vSphere 5.5 Update 1 (2074147)
Performance:
- Enabling or capturing performance statistics using Virtual SAN Observer for VMware Virtual SAN (2064240)
- Adding more than 16 hosts to a Virtual SAN cluster (2073930)
Errors:
- Virtual SAN device encounters a permanent error when devices are not readable or writeable (2071075)
- vSphere High Availability (HA) fails to restart a virtual machine when VMware Virtual SAN network is partitioned (2073949)
- VMware Virtual SAN datastores cannot store host-local and system swap files (2073944)
- Virtual SAN insufficient memory (2071753)
- Virtual SAN node reached threshold of opened components (2071379)
Horizon View and VSAN:
