Book Image

VMware Virtual SAN Cookbook

By : Jeffrey Taylor
Book Image

VMware Virtual SAN Cookbook

By: Jeffrey Taylor

Overview of this book

VMware Virtual SAN is a radically simple, hypervisor-converged storage, designed and optimized for vSphere virtual infrastructure. VMware introduced the software to help customers store more and more virtual machines. As data centers continue to evolve and grow, managing infrastructure becomes more challenging. Traditional storage solutions like monolithic storage arrays and complex management are often ill-suited to the needs of the modern data center. Software-defined storage solutions, like VMware Virtual SAN, integrate the storage side of the infrastructure with the server side, and can simplify management and improve flexibility. This book is a detailed guide which provides you with the knowledge you need to successfully implement and manage VMware VSAN and deployed infrastructures. You will start with an introduction to VSAN and object storage, before moving on to hardware selection, critical to a successful VSAN deployment. Next, you will discover how to prepare your existing infrastructure to support your VSAN deployment and explore Storage policy-Based Management, including policy changes, maintenance, validation, and troubleshooting VSAN. Finally, the book provides recipes to expedite the resolution process and gather all the information required to pursue a rapid resolution.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
12
Index

Third-party utilities

As many storage controllers are not pass-through enabled, you must create RAID-0 devices to use existing or new disks. This can be performed in the firmware/option-ROM by rebooting the host and interacting the RAID controller configuration utility via a physical or remote console.

Some RAID controller manufacturers provide tools that can be installed on an ESXi host to help interact with the RAID controller. In some cases, this can enable you to configure RAID groups from the ESXi command line, potentially avoiding the need for reboots and subsequent rebuilds for certain maintenance operations.

Note

Third-party utilities are neither supported nor endorsed by VMware. Documentation for third-party utilities is provided by their respective suppliers.

Utilities for HP SmartArray controllers

For HP servers using the HP SmartArray controllers, consider using the HP custom installation image for ESXi. Their custom images typically include everything from the hpssacli extensions...