VMware Virtual SAN is a technology for combining the resources of multiple independent hosts connected only via a network connection into a single unified compute resource. VMware accomplishes this by replicating disk traffic with other hosts in the Virtual SAN cluster to provide High Availability with local storage. Virtual SAN can use hosts of multiple sizes and configurations in the same cluster.

VMware Virtual SAN is designed to work directly with direct attached physical disks. Virtual SAN should be set up with direct disk access technologies on the local host. Virtual SAN will take care of all disk-related redundancies and storage computation on the host. Virtual SAN manages entire disks, including SSD and data disks; any disk added into Virtual SAN cannot have non-Virtual SAN data. Hardware RAID 0 is supported in Virtual SAN but carries a number of configuration requirements.

VMware Virtual SAN can be deployed using magnetic disks and flash...