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VMware Virtual SAN Cookbook

By : Jeffrey Taylor

5 (1)

VMware Virtual SAN Cookbook

5 (1)

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.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Hardware Selection for Your VSAN Cluster

1. Hardware Selection for Your VSAN Cluster

Introduction

Using the VMware Compatibility Guides

Selecting a server platform

Selecting a storage controller

Selecting a solid-state drive (SSD) for the cache tier

Selecting capacity tier disks

Deciding on a network standard

Choosing a VSAN Ready Node (an alternative option)

2. Initial Configuration and Validation of Your VSAN Cluster

2. Initial Configuration and Validation of Your VSAN Cluster

Introduction

Preparing the vCenter cluster for VSAN

Applying VSAN licensing (optional)

Configuring VSAN networking on a new standard switch

Configuring VSAN networking on an existing switch

Enabling SSH on the ESXi hosts (if applicable)

Tagging disks as local solid-state drives (if applicable)

Enabling VSAN on your cluster

Manually claiming disks for use by VSAN (if applicable)

Performing initial validation of the new VSAN cluster

Enabling vSphere HA

3. Storage Policy-based Management

3. Storage Policy-based Management

Introduction

Creating VM storage policies

Applying storage policies to a new VM or a VM deployed from a template

Applying storage policies to an existing VM migrating to VSAN

Viewing a VM's storage policies and object distribution

Changing storage policies on a VM already residing in VSAN

Modifying existing storage policies

Summary

4. Monitoring VSAN

4. Monitoring VSAN

Introduction

Examining VSAN datastore health

Examining VSAN disk health

Examining VM object health

Creating VSAN-specific alarms

Examining VSAN resync activity (vSphere 6.0)

5. VSAN Maintenance Operations

5. VSAN Maintenance Operations

Introduction

Understanding and using VSAN Maintenance Mode

Adding disks to VSAN

Removing disks/disk groups from VSAN

Replacing disks in VSAN in the event of a disk failure

Changing VSAN networking

Permanently decommissioning a VSAN node

Recovering a VSAN cluster in the event that vCenter is lost/migrating a VSAN cluster to a new vCenter server

6. Ruby vSphere Console

Introduction

Launching RVC (Windows vCenter)

Launching RVC (Linux vCenter Appliance)

Navigating RVC

The vsan.cluster_info command

The vsan.disks_stats command

The vsan.vm_object_info command

The vsan.vm_perf_stats command

The vsan.resync_dashboard command

7. Troubleshooting VSAN

7. Troubleshooting VSAN

Introduction

Investigating network partitions (with vSphere Web Client)

Investigating network partitions (without vSphere Web Client)

Investigating storage provider registration problems

Investigating other SPBM problems

Investigating VM provisioning or power-on failures

Investigating disk failures

Investigating VSAN performance with VSAN Observer

8. Support Success

8. Support Success

Introduction

Formulating a problem description

Formulating a problem summary

Collecting logging information

Collecting other diagnostic information

9. VSAN 6.0

9. VSAN 6.0

Introduction

Tagging disks as SSDs in vSphere 6.0

VSAN 6.0 fault domains

Upgrading to the VSAN 6.0 on-disk format

A. Chapter-specific Expansions

Chapter 1 – VSAN Capacity Planning

Chapter 2 – HA requirements for VSAN enablement

Chapter 3A – VSAN-specific storage-policy options

Chapter 3B – VSAN Default Storage Policy

Chapter 6 – vCenter inventory layout in RVC

B. Additional VSAN Information

VSAN network considerations

VSAN object distribution

vCenter object distribution view and VM snapshots

Understanding VSAN striping

Per object quorum in VSAN

VSAN synchronous I/O flow

VSAN object resynchronization

VSAN cluster expansion

VSAN rebuild logic and thresholds

RVC scripting and redirects

Third-party utilities

Index

Index

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What this book covers

Chapter 1, Hardware Selection for Your VSAN Cluster, provides guidance on how to build your own VSAN cluster hardware, or how to select from a VSAN Ready Node.

Chapter 2, Initial Configuration and Validation of Your VSAN Cluster, provides the step-by-step procedure to configure your new VSAN cluster and ensure that it is working properly.

Chapter 3, Storage Policy-based Management, introduces the concept of policy-based management, outlines how and why it is useful, and shows how to implement and use storage policies.

Chapter 4, Monitoring VSAN, outlines how to monitor the VSAN cluster following deployment and into production.

Chapter 5, VSAN Maintenance Operations, describes how VSAN maintenance is performed, from cluster expansion to patching to modifying virtual machines.

Chapter 6, Ruby vSphere Console, covers the VSAN-related aspects of the powerful RVC utility that is bundled with the vCenter Server.

Chapter 7, Troubleshooting VSAN, discusses how to identify and resolve various problems that may occur in the Virtual SAN environment.

Chapter 8, Support Success, should you need to contact VMware Support to pursue issue resolution, this chapter sets you up for success by outlining the steps you should take to ensure a smooth and rapid support engagement.

Chapter 9, VSAN 6.0, covers specific changes in VSAN 6.0 and calls out procedural differences between VSAN 6.0 and VSAN 5.5.

Appendix A, Chapter-specific Expansion, highlights a number of VSAN concepts that we discussed throughout this book, which can be expanded with supplementary information to improve comprehension. This information is presented on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Appendix B, Additional VSAN Information, highlights additional technical details about Virtual SAN and provides information about useful third-party tools.

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