After upgrading my lab to vSAN 6.6, I noticed that the newly introduced vMotion health check (vSAN Cluster > Monitor > vSAN > Health > Network) showed up as failed for the following checks:
Read More »vSAN 6.6 vMotion Basic Unicast Connectivity Health Check Fails
The VMware vSAN 6.6 has been released today. In this post, I am going to run through the 3 steps to upgrade vSAN 6.5 to vSAN 6.6. Upgrading Virtual SAN is a multistage process, in which you must perform the upgrade procedures in the order described here:
Today VMware has made the bits for vSAN 6.6 available for everyone to download. VMware vCenter Server 6.5.0d [Release Notes] [Download] VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi)… Read More »VMware vSAN 6.6 GA - Download Links Available
As a common best practice you should separate management, vMotion and Virtual SAN traffic from production traffic. This is not only a performance requirement, but also for security concerns. Compared to management traffic which is encrypted and requires authentication and vMotion traffic which is impracticable to eavesdrop, Virtual SAN traffic presents a large surface area to attacks.
This article explains why it is critical to keep Virtual SAN traffic in protected networks and what can happen when you ignore this guideline. I am also explaining how you can detect and monitor such attacks.
I was wondering if it possible to speed up my Intel NUC based ESXi with Virtual SAN. The idea is that compared against vSphere Flash Read Cache, Virtual SAN can use the SSD not only as read cache but also as write buffer. This post explains how you can create a Virtual SAN Datastore on a single ESXi host from the command-line without a vCenter Server.
It goes without saying that this is neither the idea behind Virtual SAN nor officially supported by VMware. It also violates VMware's EULA if you are running Virtual SAN without a VSAN license. To assign a licence you need a vCenter Server and wrap the single ESXi into a Cluster.
My configuration for this test:
This is a comprehensive guide to manage your VMware Virtual SAN with the Ruby vSphere Console. RVC is an interactive command line tool to control your platform. If you are new to RVC, make sure to read the Getting Started with Ruby vSphere Console Guide. All commands are from the latest vSphere 5.5 Update2 release.
Small, silent, transportable, and a very low power consumption. That's the Intel NUC. It's not only a great system for Homelabs, or Homeservers - It can also be used to build a portable Virtual SAN Cluster. I ordered 3 NUCs to build a VMware Virtual SAN-enabled Cluster.
Read More »VMware VSAN on Intel NUC - Mobile Cluster for $2000
VMware includes Virtual SAN in their VSPP program. Unfortunately their vCloud Usage Meter, the tool that helps to create a license report, does not support Virtual SAN by now. I wrote a little PowerCLI script to gather the required information.
During a test I used an old disk that has been previously used by Virtual SAN. The disk did not appear during the datastore creation process. I miss a flash drive here:
The problem is that the disk has not been cleared from it's VSAN configuration. It has still valid VSAN partitions, so the ESXi "claims it for VSAN" what makes it impossible to create a VMFS filesystem.
The new web based Virtual SAN Sizing Tool provides assistance for design considerations for a Virtual SAN infrastructure. Based on given requirement the tool provides full detailed specifications. Input parameters are split into 2 separate sections: Virtual Machine Characteristics and Host Hardware Characteristics.
