Book Image

VMware Virtual SAN Cookbook

Book Image

VMware Virtual SAN Cookbook

Overview of this book

The perfect guide to successful VMware Virtual SAN implementation and operations, with recipes to guide you through the process About This Book Design a Virtual SAN infrastructure from selecting hardware to full capacity. Deploy and manage a software-defined storage solution with VMware Virtual SAN Prepare for architectural and scale changes as your enterprise grows and develops Who This Book Is For If you are an administrator of a VMware vSphere infrastructure and want to simplify storage delivery by integrating storage into vSphere, this book is for you. No extensive storage background is needed as VMware Virtual SAN integrates into the existing vSphere solutions with which you are already familiar. What You Will Learn Prepare your infrastructure for VMware Virtual SAN Plan and build infrastructure solutions to suit your needs Implement VMware Virtual SAN Exploit the power of policy-based management Increase or decrease the scale of your Virtual SAN as needs change Monitor your Virtual SAN infrastructure effectively Respond to and troubleshoot problems In Detail 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. Style and approach A practical guide to implementing VMware Virtual SAN filled with recipes, tips, and detailed explanations.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
12
Index

Applying VSAN licensing (optional)


Although it is integrated with vSphere and exists as a native extension to the ESXi hypervisor, VSAN is a separately licensed product. Like all vSphere products, VSAN will enable without a license for the default 60-day evaluation period. Despite this, it is best to license the VSAN cluster prior to full deployment, so as to avoid potential complications resulting from license expiration.

Getting ready

You should be logged in to the vSphere Web Client as an administrator or user, authorized to alter cluster-level settings and licensing/entitlement.

How to do it…

To add your VSAN license, you must browse the vSphere Web Client:

  1. Navigate to Home | Licensing | License Keys.

  2. Click on the green + icon to add a license key.

  3. Enter or paste your license key into the textbox.

  4. Click on Next.

How it works…

VSAN is licensed per-cluster. As VSAN is a distributed product, it is cluster-centric rather than host-centric. The license is applied to the vSphere cluster within vCenter...