VirtualSANBetaLabGuide-Version1.0.5.pdf

VMware vSphere 5.5

Virtual SAN Hosted Beta

Lab Guide


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Table of Contents Lab Overview ................................................................................................................................... 7

How to submit a bug in Hosted Beta ........................................................................................... 7

Virtual SAN .................................................................................................................................. 8

Virtual SAN Overview ...................................................................................................................... 9

What is Virtual SAN ................................................................................................................ 9

Key Components................................................................................................................... 10

Customer Benefits ................................................................................................................ 10

Primary Use Cases ............................................................................................................... 11

Virtual SAN Requirements ............................................................................................................. 12

vCenter Server ...................................................................................................................... 12

vSphere ................................................................................................................................. 12

Disk & Network...................................................................................................................... 12

Module 1 Virtual SAN Setup and Enable ................................................................................... 14

Setup of Virtual SAN Network and Enable Cluster ................................................................... 15

Easy Setup ............................................................................................................................ 15

Setup Virtual SAN Network ................................................................................................... 15

Navigate from the Home to Hosts & Clusters ....................................................................... 16

Navigate to esx-01a.corp.local.............................................................................................. 16

Add Virtual SAN Network ...................................................................................................... 17

Virtual SAN traffic .................................................................................................................. 17

Select Target Device ............................................................................................................. 18

Select Network ...................................................................................................................... 18

Target Device Selected ......................................................................................................... 19

Specify Virtual SAN for Port Group ....................................................................................... 19

Use IPv4 DHCP .................................................................................................................... 20

Ready to complete ................................................................................................................ 20

vmk3 VSAN Network Added ................................................................................................. 21

Enable Virtual SAN ............................................................................................................... 21

Turn ON Virtual SAN ............................................................................................................. 22

Refresh .................................................................................................................................. 22

All hosts participating in Virtual SAN .................................................................................... 23

Create Disk Group for Virtual SAN ....................................................................................... 23

Claim Disks for Virtual SAN Use ........................................................................................... 24

Hosts and Disks Selected ..................................................................................................... 25

Task Begins .......................................................................................................................... 25

Refresh .................................................................................................................................. 26

vsanDatastore ....................................................................................................................... 27

Verify Storage Provider Status .............................................................................................. 28

Select VM Storage Policies ................................................................................................... 29


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VM Storage Polices in vCenter ............................................................................................. 30

Create my first VM storage policy ......................................................................................... 31

Create a new VM Storage Policy .......................................................................................... 31

Rule-Sets .............................................................................................................................. 31

Create a Rule ........................................................................................................................ 32

Default Virtual Machine Storage Policies .............................................................................. 32

Hosts and Clusters View ....................................................................................................... 33

Default Storage Service Level during Storage vMotion ........................................................ 33

Select Migration Type ........................................................................................................... 34

Move the VM to a Virtual SAN Datastore ............................................................................. 34

Review Selection................................................................................................................... 34

Verification ............................................................................................................................ 35

Physical Disk Placement ....................................................................................................... 36

Storage vMotion from a Virtual SAN datastore ..................................................................... 37

Select Migration Type ........................................................................................................... 37

Move the VM to a non Virtual SAN datastore ....................................................................... 38

Useful Virtual SAN CLI Commands ............................................................................................... 39

Open PuTTY ......................................................................................................................... 39

ssh to esx-01a.corp.local ...................................................................................................... 40

Login to esx-01a.corp.local ................................................................................................... 40

vsan Commands ................................................................................................................... 41

vsan cluster ........................................................................................................................... 41

vsan network ......................................................................................................................... 42

vsan storage .......................................................................................................................... 42

vsan policy ............................................................................................................................ 43

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 43

Module 2 Virtual SAN with vMotion, Storage vMotion and HA Interoperability .......................... 44

Build VM Storage Policies ......................................................................................................... 45

Enable Storage Policies ........................................................................................................ 45

Select VM Storage Policies ................................................................................................... 45

Create VM storage policy ...................................................................................................... 46

Create a new rule for Tier 2 Apps ......................................................................................... 46

Rule-Sets .............................................................................................................................. 47

Create a Rule on Number of Failures tolerate ...................................................................... 48

How many failures to tolerate? ............................................................................................. 48

Matching Resources ............................................................................................................. 49

Ready to complete ................................................................................................................ 49

Tier 2 Apps Rule Ready ........................................................................................................ 50

vMotion & Storage vMotion ....................................................................................................... 51

Virtual SAN Interoperability ................................................................................................... 51


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Storage vMotion from NFS to vsanDatastore ....................................................................... 52

Migrate base-sles VM ........................................................................................................... 52

Change datastore ................................................................................................................. 53

Select vsanDatastore ............................................................................................................ 53

Review and Finish ................................................................................................................. 54

Storage vMotion underway ................................................................................................... 54

Review the new destination .................................................................................................. 55

vMotion from host with local storage to host without local storage ....................................... 55

Change Host ......................................................................................................................... 56

Allow Host Selection ............................................................................................................. 56

Select esx-04 Host ................................................................................................................ 57

Migrate VM back to esx-01a ................................................................................................. 58

vSphere HA and Virtual SAN Interoperability ........................................................................... 59

vSphere HA & Virtual SAN Interoperability ........................................................................... 59

Enable HA on the cluster ...................................................................................................... 60

Turn ON vSphere HA ............................................................................................................ 60

HA Enabled ........................................................................................................................... 61

Host Failure No running VMs ................................................................................................ 62

Reboot esx-02a ..................................................................................................................... 63

esx-02 Host Failure ............................................................................................................... 63

Other hosts in Virtual SAN cluster status .............................................................................. 64

Check base-sles VM Home .................................................................................................. 64

Check base-sles Hard Disk 1 ................................................................................................ 65

Host Failure with Running VMs ............................................................................................. 65

Start VM ................................................................................................................................ 66

Identify Host .......................................................................................................................... 66

VM Storage Policies .............................................................................................................. 67

vMotion to esx-03a ................................................................................................................ 67

Select esx-03 as the host ...................................................................................................... 68

Confirm esx-03a.corp.local ................................................................................................... 69

Reboot esx-03a ..................................................................................................................... 69

Host Status ............................................................................................................................ 70

base-sles Status.................................................................................................................... 71

Refresh .................................................................................................................................. 72

base-sles has restarted on another host .............................................................................. 73

Quorum to run the VM .......................................................................................................... 73

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 73

Module 3 Virtual SAN Storage Level Agility ............................................................................... 74

Setting up our environment ................................................................................................... 75

Enter into Maintenance Mode ................................................................................................... 76


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Moving a vSphere Host out of the cluster ............................................................................. 77

Defining your VM Storage Policies............................................................................................ 78

Decisions when creating a VM Storage Policy ..................................................................... 78

Storage Policies .................................................................................................................... 78

Creating a VM Storage Policy (1).............................................................................................. 79

Creating a VM Storage Policy (2) ......................................................................................... 79






Create a Virtual Machine and apply VM Storage Policy ....................................................... 82

Create a Virtual Machine and apply VM Storage Policy (2) ................................................. 83



View Physical Disk Placement of the VM ............................................................................. 86

Understanding the storage requirements of a VM .................................................................... 87

Overview of the Capabilities of a VM Storage Policy............................................................ 87

Understanding VM Storage Policies ..................................................................................... 88

Modify VM Storage Policies (1) ............................................................................................. 90

Modify VM Storage Policies (2) ............................................................................................. 90

Resync VM with the Policy Change (1) ................................................................................ 91

Resync VM with the Policy Change (2) ................................................................................ 91

View Physical Disk Placement of the VM ............................................................................. 92

Scaling out your Compute and Storage resources ................................................................... 93

Adding a Compute Node ....................................................................................................... 93

Verify vsanDatastore access ................................................................................................ 93

Add a Compute Node with Local Storage (1) ....................................................................... 94







Add a Compute Node with Local Storage (8) ..................................................................... 100

Add a Compute Node with Local Storage (9) ..................................................................... 101

Add a Compute Node with Local Storage (10) ................................................................... 102

Add a Compute Node with Local Storage (11) ................................................................... 102

Verify vsanDatastore Disk Groups ...................................................................................... 104

View vsanDatastore Capacity ............................................................................................. 105


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Changing VM Storage Policies on the fly ................................................................................ 106

Modify the VM Storage Policy (1) ....................................................................................... 106

Modify the VM Storage Policy (2) ....................................................................................... 106

Resync Virtual Machine with Policy Changes (1) ............................................................... 107

Resync Virtual Machine with Policy Changes (2) ............................................................... 108

Virtual SAN Command Line and Troubleshooting .................................................................. 110

Which interface is Virtual SAN using for communication? .................................................. 110

Which disks have been claimed by Virtual SAN? ............................................................... 111

Get Cluster details .............................................................................................................. 112

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 112

Virtual SAN Summary ......................................................................................................... 113


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Lab Overview

How to submit a bug in Hosted Beta

We want to make the best use of your time while getting valuable feedback from you on

your experience of using our products. As you progress through the Hosted Beta lab,

well record all of your lab activity. When youre ready to give us some feedback, use the vSubABug tool, to tell us what you think, and when you click submit, well grab the last few minutes of your lab activity and all the relevant logs so our engineers can get

some great context on what you did in the lead up to that feedback.

Double click on the vSubABug icon on your VMware View Desktop control center.

You will be prompted to enter your email or station number. Enter your email and click ok. Describe the Bug. Click Add for each one and then Click on Submit TheBugs!

Its that simple.


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Virtual SAN

This lab is focused on a new storage feature in vSphere; Virtual SAN (VSAN). The lab is

broken up into three modules. Each Module depends on the next, so it is preferred that

they be taken in order.

The first three Modules will take about 120 minutes to complete.

Please be aware of some reboot time needed at the end of

Module 2. If you plan to continue from Module 2 to 3 factor

in a few extra minutes before you can start Module 3.

The Modules are:

Module 1 Virtual SAN Setup, Enable and Build Storage Policies (60 Minutes)

Module 2 Virtual SAN with vMotion, Storage vMotion and HA Interoperability (30 minutes)

Module 3 Virtual SAN Storage Level Agility (30 minutes)

There are average times next to each module as to how long it will take to complete.

Depending on experience your time may be more or less.


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Virtual SAN Overview VMwares plan for software defined storage is to focus on a set of VMware initiatives around local storage, shared storage and storage/data services. In essence, we want to

make vSphere a platform for storage services. Software defined storage aims to provide

storage services and service level agreement automation through a software layer on the

hosts that integrates with, and abstracts, the underlying hardware.

What is Virtual SAN

Virtual SAN (VSAN) is a new storage solution from VMware that is fully integrated with

vSphere. It is an object based storage system and a platform for VM Storage Policies that

aims to simplify virtual machine storage placement decisions for vSphere administrators.

It is fully integrated with core vSphere features such as vSphere High Availability, DRS

and vMotion. Its goal is to provide both high availability as well as scale out storage

functionality. It can also be thought of in the context of Quality of Service (QoS) in so far

as VM Storage Policies can be created which defined the level of performance and

availability required on a per virtual machine basis.

Virtual SAN (VSAN) is many things

A Storage Solution that is fully integrated with vSphere

A Platform for Policy Based Storage to simplify Virtual Machine deployments decisions

A Highly Available Clustered Storage Solution

A Scale-Out Storage System

A Quality Of Service implementation (for its storage objects)


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Key Components

Hypervisor-based software-defined storage

Aggregates local HDDs to provide a clustered data store for VM consumption

Leverages local SSDs as a cache

Distributed RAID object-based (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) architecture provides no single point of failure

Policy-based VM-storage management for end-to-end SLA enforcement

Integrated with vCenter

Integrated with vSphere HA, DRS and vMotion

Scale-Out Storage: 3-8 nodes

Customer Benefits


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VMware recognizes the significant cost of storage in many virtualization projects. Many

projects stall, or are canceled due to the fact that to meet the storage requirements of the

project, the storage simply becomes too expensive.

Using a hybrid approach of SSD for performance and HDD for capacity, Virtual SAN

(VSAN) is aimed at re-enabling projects that require a less expensive storage solution.

Easy to setup, configure & manage

Eliminate performance bottlenecks and single points of failure

Lower storage TCO

Primary Use Cases


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Virtual SAN Requirements The following section details the hardware and software requirements necessary to create

a Virtual SAN (VSAN) cluster

vCenter Server

Virtual SAN (VSAN) requires a vCenter Server running 5.5. Virtual SAN can be

managed by both the Windows version of vCenter Server and the vCenter Server

Appliance (VCSA). Virtual SAN is configured and monitored via the vSphere Web

Client and this also needs to be version 5.5.

vSphere

Virtual SAN (VSAN) requires at least 3 vSphere hosts (where each host has local

storage) in order to form a supported Virtual SAN cluster. This is to allow the cluster to

meet the minimum availability requirements of tolerating at least one component failure.

The vSphere hosts must be running vSphere version 5.5 at a minimum. With fewer hosts

there is a risk to the availability of virtual machines if a component is unavailable. The

maximum number of hosts supported is 8 in the initial release of Virtual SAN.

Each vSphere host in the cluster that contributes local storage to Virtual SAN must have

at least one hard disk drive (HDD) and at least one solid state disk drive (SSD).

Disk & Network

A HBA or a Pass-thru RAID Controller is required (a RAID Controller which can present disks directly to the host without a RAID configuration)

A combination of HDD & SSD devices are required (a minimum of 1 HDD & 1 SSD [SAS or SATA]), VMware recommends a 1:10 ratio between SSD and HDD

capacity.

The SSD will provide both a write buffer and a read cache. The more SSD capacity in the host, the greater the performance since more I/O can be cached.

Not every node in a Virtual SAN (VSAN) cluster needs to have local storage. Hosts with no local storage can still leverage distributed datastore.


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Each vSphere host must have at least one network interface card (NIC). The NIC must be at least 1 GB capable. However, as a best practice, VMware is

recommending 10 GB network interface cards. With a Distributed Switch, NIOC can

also be enabled to dedicate bandwidth to the Virtual SAN network

A Distributed Switch can be optionally configured between all hosts in the Virtual SAN cluster, although VMware Standard Switches (VSS) will also work.

A Virtual SAN VMkernel port must be configured for each host..

The VMkernel port is labeled Virtual SAN. This port is used for inter--cluster node

communication and also for read and writes when one of the vSphere hosts in the cluster

owns a particular virtual machine, but the actual data blocks making up the virtual

machine files are located on a different vSphere host in the cluster. In this case, I/O will

need to traverse the network configured between the hosts in the cluster.


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Module 1 Virtual SAN Setup and Enable


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Setup of Virtual SAN Network and Enable Cluster

In this chapter we will add a VMkernel adapter to the esx-01a host for Virtual SAN use,

enable Virtual SAN and create a disk group.

Easy Setup

Virtual SAN (VSAN) is configured in just a few clicks.

Setup Virtual SAN Network

Begin by launching Firefox browser and login to vSphere Web Client. We are using the

Windows based vCenter so your login will be Administrator. FYI Virtual SAN (VSAN) is supported on both Windows and the appliance versions of vCenter server.

User name: Administrator

Password: VMware1!


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Navigate from the Home to Hosts & Clusters

Double-Click Hosts & Clusters 22

Navigate to esx-01a.corp.local

Expand the navigation on the left side and click esx-01a.corp.local

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Add Virtual SAN Network

With esx-01a.corp.local selected navigate to Manage -> Networking -> VMkernel

adapters

We must now add a VMkernel adapter for the Virtual SAN traffic. Click the icon to add a

new adapter (4)

Virtual SAN traffic

Select VMkernel Network Adapter. Click Next

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Select Target Device

We have already attached each host to a distributed switch and created a Virtual SAN

port group. You must select the port group to use for this host.

Click 'Browse'.

Select Network

Select the VSAN Network and click 'OK'.


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Target Device Selected

After VSAN Network is selected your screen should look like the above. Then click Next

Specify Virtual SAN for Port Group

Keep the default settings but select Virtual SAN traffic. Click Next


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Use IPv4 DHCP

Keep the default settings. Click Next

Ready to complete

Click Finish if your screen looks like the above


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vmk3 VSAN Network Added

You should now see vmk3 added for the VSAN Network.

A VMkernel adapter for Virtual SAN Traffic must be added to each host in the cluster.

We have already repeated the above steps for esx-02a, esx-03a, and esx-04a for you. Feel

free to click on each host to see the VSAN VMkernel adapter. If you don't add this to

each host a "mis-configuration warning" will appear on the Virtual SAN General tab.

Enable Virtual SAN

Once our network adapters are in place we can turn on Virtual SAN at the Cluster level.

Select Cluster Site A then navigate to Manage > Settings > Virtual SAN > General >

Edit

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Turn ON Virtual SAN

Check "Turn ON Virtual SAN", click OK.

We are going to keep "Manual" selected for this lab. What this means is that we must

manually add disks. The Automatic option will add all empty disks on the hosts to be

claimed by Virtual SAN.

IGNORE the license warning "You must assign a license key

to the cluster before the evaluation period of Virtual SAN

expires". A valid license has been applied for you.

Refresh

Click the Refresh icon to see the changes


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All hosts participating in Virtual SAN

After the refresh you should see all 4 hosts in the Virtual SAN cluster, but no disks are

yet in use.

Create Disk Group for Virtual SAN

From here we will create a new disk group that will use all eligible disks. Select Cluster

Site A > Manage > Settings > Virtual SAN > Disk Management > Claim Disks (5)

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Claim Disks for Virtual SAN Use

Click "Select all eligible disks"

In this lab we will claim all free disks that meet the Virtual SAN (VSAN) rules. Note the

rules that must apply for a host & disk to be seen on this page.

Each disk group must contain at least one SSD. The SSD is used for write cache/read

buffer and the HDDs are used for data disks/capacity. VMware recommends, as a best

practice, a 1:10 ratio between SSD and HDD capacity.


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Hosts and Disks Selected

All hosts and disks should now be selected. Click "OK".

Note you can select any combination of eligible hosts and disks to meet your

requirements. In this lab we will take all unclaimed disks.

Task Begins

Recent Tasks will show work underway. Due to the amount of hosts and disks selected

this process will take about 2 minutes to complete.


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Refresh

After 2 minutes Refresh the web client to show the new disk group created.

Congratulations, your Virtual SAN is enabled with multiple valid disk groups.


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vsanDatastore

A vsanDatastore has also been created. To see the capacity navigate to Datastores >

Manage > Settings > vsanDatastore > General

Ignore the ds-site-nfs01 (inactive) message. This is a result of the lab environment and

you will find this datastore active.

The capacity shown is an aggregate of the HDDs taken from each of the vSphere hosts in

the cluster (less some vsanDatastore overhead). The SSD volumes are not considered

when the capacity calculation is made.

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Verify Storage Provider Status

For each vSphere host to be aware of the capabilities of Virtual SAN and to communicate

between vCenter and the storage layer a Storage Provider is created. Each vSphere host

has a storage provider once the Virtual SAN cluster is formed. The storage providers will

be registered automatically with SMS (Storage Management Service) by vCenter.

However, it is best to verify that the storage providers on one of the vSphere hosts has

successfully registered and is active, and that the other storage providers from the

remaining vSphere hosts in the cluster are registered and are in standby mode.

Navigate to the vCenter server > Manage > Storage Providers to check the status.

In this four-node cluster, one of the Virtual SAN providers is online and active, while the

other three are in Standby. Each vSphere host participating in the Virtual SAN cluster

will have a provider, but only one needs to be active to provide Virtual SAN datastore

capability information.

Should the active provider fail for some reason one of the standby storage providers will

take over.

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View Storage Policies

VM Storage Policies are similar in some respects to the vSphere 5.0 & 5.1 Profile Driven

Storage feature.

VM Storage Policies are enabled on vSphere 5.5 when you enable a Virtual SAN Cluster

To begin return to Home screen

Select VM Storage Policies

Click VM Storage Policies


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VM Storage Polices in vCenter

Click Enable VM Storage Policies per compute resource icon with the check mark

You will notice that VM Storage Policies is enabled on the Virtual SAN Cluster Cluster Site A automatically, as a VSAN Cluster, when enabled, turns on VM Storage Policies automatically. This is proved, as host esx-05a.corp.local has a status of Unknown

Your screen should look like the above, you can Close the window

The capabilities of the vsanDatastore should now be visible during VM Storage Policy

creation. By using a subset of the capabilities a vSphere admin will be able to create a

storage policy for their VM to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS).


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Create my first VM storage policy

You should be back at VM Storage Policies. Click the icon with the plus sign to create a

new storage policy

Create a new VM Storage Policy

In this example we walk through create a new storage policy rule for a print server

In the Name field enter Print Server, Click Next to continue

Rule-Sets

Spend a moment reading this page to learn about rule-sets. Click Next when ready


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Create a Rule

Select VSAN from the capabilities list (1)

Then click "Add capability..." (2) to view the Capabilities available

Click Cancel to exit the wizard

In Module 3 you will take a deeper dive on rule capabilities.

When you enable Virtual SAN a VM Storage Policy with the following capabilities will

be created by default

Number of failures to tolerate = 1 and Force Provisioning = 1

Default Virtual Machine Storage Policies

We will verify this behavior when doing a Storage vMotion

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Hosts and Clusters View

Click on the Home icon in the vSphere Client.

Then click Hosts and Clusters on the Main Screen.

Default Storage Service Level during Storage vMotion

Select Cluster Site A

Navigate to base-sles

Right Click on base-sles and select the Migrate Option

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Select Migration Type

Select the Change Datastore option and click Next

Move the VM to a Virtual SAN Datastore

Select None from the VM Storage Policy dropdown

Pick the vsanDatastore from the Compatible datastores and click Next

Review Selection

Review the changes being made and click 'Finish' to migrate the VM.

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Verification

The Storage vMotion will take a few minutes to complete. In the Summary page of the

base-sles VM you will notice the Storage Policy is blank and that the VM base-sles

resides on the vsanDatastore.

Now lets verify if the default VM Storage Policy is applied to the objects belonging to the VM base-sles on datastore vsanDatastore


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Physical Disk Placement

As a final step, you might be interested in seeing how your virtual machines objects have been placed on the vsanDatastore.

To view the placement, select base-sles > Manage > VM Storage Policies > Hard disk

1.

The Physical Disk Placement will show you on which host the components of your

objects reside.

The RAID 1 indicates that the VMDK has a replica. By default any VM deployed to the

vsanDatastore is mirrored for availability as the default Virtual SAN VM Storage Policy

is enforced.

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Storage vMotion from a Virtual SAN datastore

In preparation for Module 2, we will Storage VMotion the Virtual Machine base-sles

back to the NFS datastore

Select Cluster Site A

Navigate to base-sles

Right Click on base-sles and select the Migrate Option

Select Migration Type

Select the Change Datastore option and click Next

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Move the VM to a non Virtual SAN datastore

Keep the default virtual disk format and VM Storage Policy Keep existing VM storage

polices

Pick ds-site-a-nfs01 from the list of datastores and click Next

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Useful Virtual SAN CLI Commands In this lesson, we will provide some useful commands to use with Virtual SAN. Feel free

to follow along. Do note that if you run any commands outside the scope of this lesson,

you could potentially have an adverse effect on the lab and may not be able to continue

with any remaining Modules.

The esxcli commands included with vsan are:

vsan datastore

vsan network

vsan storage

vsan cluster

vsan policy

Open PuTTY

From the Desktop, open PuTTY.


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ssh to esx-01a.corp.local

Double-click on esx-01a.

Login to esx-01a.corp.local

Login to esx-01a as:

Login as: root

Password: VMware1!

Using username "root". Using keyboard-interactive authentication. Password: The time and date of this login have been sent to the system logs. VMware offers supported, powerful system administration tools. Please see www.vmware.com/go/sysadmintools for details. The ESXi Shell can be disabled by an administrative user. See the vSphere Security documentation for more information. ~ #


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vsan Commands

By typing:

esxcli vsan

This will give you a list of all the possible esxcli commands related to vsan, with a brief

description for each.

vsan cluster

To view details about the Virtual SAN Cluster, like its Health or whether it is a Master or

Backup Node, you can type the following:

esxcli vsan cluster get

~ # esxcli vsan Usage: esxcli vsan {cmd} [cmd options] Available Namespaces: datastore Commands for VSAN datastore configuration network Commands for VSAN host network configuration storage Commands for VSAN physical storage configuration cluster Commands for VSAN host cluster configuration maintenancemode Commands for VSAN maintenance mode operation policy Commands for VSAN storage policy configuration trace Commands for VSAN trace configuration

~ # esxcli vsan cluster get Cluster Information Enabled: true Current Local Time: 2013-09-18T09:55:40Z Local Node UUID: 5228df36-776b-505a-35cd-005056808f33 Local Node State: AGENT Local Node Health State: HEALTHY Sub-Cluster Master UUID: 52290240-9add-3201-0a17-00505680ff72 Sub-Cluster Backup UUID: 5228efe9-3da8-ff3b-44d7-0050568033b1 Sub-Cluster UUID: 52d1c8ca-c7b4-8853-d6f4-159265c9554e Sub-Cluster Membership Entry Revision: 8 Sub-Cluster Member UUIDs: 52290240-9add-3201-0a17-00505680ff72, 5228efe9-3da8-ff3b-44d7-0050568033b1, 5228df36-776b-505a-35cd-005056808f33, 5228eece-e9ba-0af2-8616-005056809b63, 5228f336-8733-e2d9-0ea5-00505680d045 Sub-Cluster Membership UUID: fb582f52-71e8-f226-b5a7-00505680ff72


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vsan network

To view networking details, you can execute this command:

esxcli vsan network list

vsan storage

To view the details on the physical storage devices on this host that are part of the Virtual

SAN, you can use this command:

esxcli vsan storage list

~ # esxcli vsan network list Interface VmkNic Name: vmk3 IP Protocol: IPv4 Interface UUID: e5072952-1cc0-ee9c-b96f-005056808f33 Agent Group Multicast Address: 224.2.3.4 Agent Group Multicast Port: 23451 Master Group Multicast Address: 224.1.2.3 Master Group Multicast Port: 12345 Multicast TTL: 5

~ # esxcli vsan storage list mpx.vmhba2:C0:T1:L0 Device: mpx.vmhba2:C0:T1:L0 Display Name: mpx.vmhba2:C1:T0:L0 Is SSD: false VSAN UUID: 523c0dc6-9744-c275-ef38-f195d5c22682 VSAN Disk Group UUID: 52777487-f70a-0af3-198e-9ffc747ab13b VSAN Disk Group Name: mpx.vmhba2:C1:T0:L0 Used by this host: true In CMMDS: true Checksum: 14554848699992102318 Checksum OK: true mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0 Device: mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0 Display Name: mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0 Is SSD: true VSAN UUID: 52777487-f70a-0af3-198e-9ffc747ab13b VSAN Disk Group UUID: 52777487-f70a-0af3-198e-9ffc747ab13b VSAN Disk Group Name: mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0 Used by this host: true In CMMDS: true Checksum: 654352745454525052 Checksum OK: true


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vsan policy

To view the Policies in effect, such as how many failures the VSAN can tolerate, the

command can be executed:

esxcli vsan policy getdefault

Conclusion

This concludes Module 1 Virtual SAN Setup and Enable

~ # esxcli vsan policy getdefault Policy Class Policy Value ------------ -------------------------------------------------------- cluster (("hostFailuresToTolerate" i1) ("forceProvisioning" i1)) vdisk (("hostFailuresToTolerate" i1) ("forceProvisioning" i1)) vmnamespace (("hostFailuresToTolerate" i1) ("forceProvisioning" i1)) vmswap (("hostFailuresToTolerate" i1) ("forceProvisioning" i1))


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Module 2 Virtual SAN with vMotion, Storage vMotion and HA Interoperability


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Build VM Storage Policies

In this chapter we will create a storage policy for Tier 2 Apps.

Enable Storage Policies

VM Storage Policies are similar in some respects to the vSphere 5.0 & 5.1 Profile Driven

Storage feature.

To begin return to Home screen

Select VM Storage Policies

Click VM Storage Policies


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Create VM storage policy

You should be back at VM Storage Policies. Click the icon with the plus sign to create a

new storage policy

Create a new rule for Tier 2 Apps

In this example we will create a new storage policy rule for our Tier 2 Apps.

In the Name field enter Tier 2 Apps, Description: Storage Policy for Tier 2 Apps

Click Next to continue


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Rule-Sets

Rule-sets are a way of using storage from different vendors, for example you can have

single bronze policy with one Virtual SAN Rule-Set and one 3rd party storage vendor Rule-Set. When Tier 2 Apps is chosen as the storage service level at VM deployment time both Virtual SAN and the 3rd party storage will match the requirements in the

policy.

We have already briefly looked at rule-sets in Module 1. Click Next when ready


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Create a Rule on Number of Failures tolerate

I want the VMs which have this policy associated with them to tolerate at least one

component failure (host, network or disk).

Select VSAN from the capabilities list (1)

Select Number of failures to tolerate (2)

How many failures to tolerate?

Number of Failures to tolerate field appears. Enter 1

Click "Next"

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Matching Resources

And the nice thing about this is immediately I can tell whether or not any datastores are

capable of understanding the requirement in the matching resources window. As you

can see vsanDatastore is capable of understanding these requirements that I have placed

in the VM Storage Policy.

Note that there is no guarantee that the datastore can meet the requirements in the VM

Storage Policy. It simply means that the requirements in the storage policy can be

understood by the datastores which show up in the matching resources.

Click Next.

Ready to complete

Review the rules added and click Finish


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Tier 2 Apps Rule Ready

This is where we start to define the requirements for our VMs and the applications

running in the VMs. Now we simply tell the storage layer what our requirements are by

selecting the appropriate VM Storage Policy during VM deployment and the storage

layer takes care of deploying the VM in such a way that it meets those requirements.


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vMotion & Storage vMotion

In this chapter we will examine the interoperability of Virtual SAN with core vSphere

features such as vMotion & Storage vMotion. You will power on a virtual machine called

base-sles which resides on host esx-01a.corp.local. This is a very small virtual machine

but will be sufficient for the purposes of this lab.

Virtual SAN Interoperability

Supported Not Applicable Futures VM Snapshots vSphere HA

vSphere DRS

vMotion Storage vMotion

SRM/VR VDP/VDPA

SIOC Storage DRS

Fault Tolerance (FT)

vSphere Flash Read Cache

Horizon View vCloud Director

> 2TB VMDKs

Virtual SAN is fully integrated with many of VMware's storage and availability features.

In this module we will turn on HA and use vMotion, but you will notice that many other

availability features are supported. SIOC is not applicable because Virtual SAN takes the

performance requirements from policy settings. Storage DRS is not applicable because

Virtual SAN (VSAN) is a single datastore. DPM may include hosts in a VSAN cluster so

we don't want to power-off hosts that may impact the storage policy.


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Storage vMotion from NFS to vsanDatastore

Navigate to Hosts & Clusters > base-sles > Summary

Migrate base-sles VM

Right-Click base-sles and select Migrate


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Change datastore

Choose the option to Change datastore. Click "Next"

Select vsanDatastore

In the VM Storage Policy drop down select Tier 2 Apps

Based on the storage policy the disk format and destination datastore will be selected.

Click Next


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Review and Finish

Click Finish

Storage vMotion underway

In this example the migration will take about 2 minutes to complete.


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Review the new destination

Notice in the Summary screen the Storage Policy is now compliant and applied against

the vsanDatastore. This demonstrates that you can migrate from traditional datastore

formats such as NFS & VMFS to the new vsanDatastore format.

vMotion from host with local storage to host without local storage

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Now let's take a look at hosts which are in the Virtual SAN cluster and do not have any

local storage. These hosts can still use the vsanDatastore to host VMs.

At this point, the virtual machine base-sles resides on the vsanDatastore. The VM is

currently on a host that contributes local storage to the vsanDatastore (esx-

01a.corp.local). We will now move this to a host (esx-04a.corp.local) that does not have

any local storage.

Once again select the base-sles virtual machine from the inventory. From the Actions

drop down menu, once again select Migrate. This time we choose the option to Change host.

Change Host

Select Change Host. Click Next

Allow Host Selection

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Select Cluster Site A (1)

Check "Allow host selection within this Cluster" at bottom of screen.

Click Next

Select esx-04 Host

Select esx-04a.corp.local. Click Next, then Finish

When the migration has completed, you will see how hosts that do not contribute any

local storage to the vsanDatastore can still run virtual machines. This means that Virtual

SAN can be scaled out on a compute only basis.


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Migrate VM back to esx-01a

To complete this chapter migrate the VM back to esx-01a.corp.local which has local

storage making up the Virtual SAN datastore,

Follow the steps above and then click Finish

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vSphere HA and Virtual SAN Interoperability

In this final step we will provide details on how to evaluate Virtual SAN with vSphere

HA.

vSphere HA & Virtual SAN Interoperability

First, lets examine the object layout of the base-sles virtual machine.

Select the base-sles > Manage > VM Storage Policies > VM Home

This storage object has 3 components, two of which are replicas making up a RAID-1

mirror. The third is a witness disk that is used for tie breaking.

The next object is the disk, which you looked at in Module 1. Just to recap, this has a

"Number of Disk Stripes Per Object" set to 2; therefore there is a RAID-0 stripe

component across two disks.

To mirror an object with a striped width of 2, 4 disks are required. Again, since Number

of Failures to Tolerate is set to 1 there is also a RAID-1 configuration to replicate the

stripe. So we have two RAID-0 (stripe) configurations, and a RAID-1 to mirror the

stripes. The witnesses are once again used for tie-breaking functionality in the event of

failures.

The next step is to invoke some failures in the cluster to see how this impacts the

components that make up our virtual machine storage objects, but also how Virtual SAN

& vSphere HA interoperate to enable availability.


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Enable HA on the cluster

Navigate to the Cluster Site A > Manage > Settings > vSphere HA > Edit

Turn ON vSphere HA

Check the box to Turn ON vSphere HA. Click OK.

By default, the vSphere HA Admission Controls have been set to tolerate a single host

failure. You can examine this if you wish by opening the Admission Control settings to

verify.


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HA Enabled

Select Cluster Site A > Summary

After enabling HA you will see a warning about insufficient resources to satisfy vSphere

HA failover level. This is a transient warning and will eventually go away after a few

moments, once the HA cluster has finished configuring. You can try refreshing to remove

it.

The cluster summary tab will show a vSphere HA overview (3)


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Host Failure No running VMs

In this first failure scenario we will take one of the hosts out of the cluster. This host does

not have any running VMs but we will use it to examine how the Virtual SAN (VSAN)

replicas provide continuous availability for the VM and how the Admission Control

setting in vSphere HA and the Number of Failures to Tolerate are met.

Select esx-02a.corp.local > Reboot

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Reboot esx-02a

Click OK

esx-02 Host Failure

Navigate to esx-02a.corp.local > Summary

In a short time we see warnings and errors related to the fact that vCenter can no longer

reach the HA Agent and then we see errors related to host connection and power status.

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Other hosts in Virtual SAN cluster status

If we check on other hosts in the cluster, we see VSAN communication warnings.

Navigate to esx-01a.corp.local > Summary

Check base-sles VM Home

Navigate to base-sles > Manage > VM Storage Policies > VM Home (4)

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With one host out of the cluster, object components that were held on that host are

displayed as Absent and Object not found.

Check base-sles Hard Disk 1

For base-sles take a look at the Hard disk 1

Basically any components on the rebooted host show up as Absent. When the host

rejoins the cluster all components are resynchronized and put back in the Active state

when this completes. A bitmap of blocks that have changed between replicas is

maintained and this is referenced to resynchronize the components. Now we can see one

part of Virtual SAN availability and how virtual machines continue to run even if

components go absent.

Host Failure with Running VMs

Wait for the host to reboot from the previous test and that all components show up as

Active before continuing. Remember that we have only set Number of Failures to

Tolerate to 1. In this next example we will halt the vSphere host that contains the

running VM base-sles. Here we will see interoperability between HA and Virtual SAN.


L A B G U I D E / 6 6

Start VM

Navigate to base-sles Summary page and Right-Click to Power On

Identify Host

Once started make a note of the host it's running on. In this case it's esx-04a.corp.local. If

you completed the migration step earlier it may show esx-01a.

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VM Storage Policies

Navigate to base-sles > Manage > VM Storage Policies > Hard disk 1

We can see which host is acting as Witness and which provides the RAID 1 components.

Just for fun, we will vMotion the VM to a RAID 1 Component host and halt that host.

vMotion to esx-03a

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If the VM is already running on esx-03a.corp.local (a host which also has a RAID 1

component) you can skip this step, otherwise Migrate to esx-03a.corp.local

Right Click base-sles > Migrate

Select esx-03 as the host

Complete the Wizard to Migrate the VM to esx-03a.corp.local. Remember to check

"Allow host selection within this cluster" on Step 2


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Confirm esx-03a.corp.local

Navigate back to the Summary screen to confirm that esx-03a.corp.local is the host.

Reboot esx-03a

Right-Click esx-03a host and Reboot

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Host Status

The Host and VM will become unreachable.

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base-sles Status

Navigate to base-sles > Manage > VM Storage Policies > Hard disk 1

Depending on how quick you are navigating in the browser you may notice that base-sles

is disconnected and the Component RAID 1 disk is Absent.

Why is the Raid 1 component is termed Absent? In this particular failure scenario, i.e. host failure, Virtual SAN will identify which

objects are out of compliance and starts a timer with a timeout period of 60 minutes. If

the component, in this case a mirror, comes back within 60 minutes, any differences will

be synchronized, and the object, in this case the VM home or Hard disk, will return to

compliance.

If the component does not return within 60 minutes, Virtual SAN will create a new mirror

copy.

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Refresh

Refresh and you will soon see a change to the RAID 1 Components and that base-sles is

now available. `

Alarms will also be generated and a Warning found on the Summary page of each host

(1)

The vSphere HA agent on this host cannot reach some of the

management network addresses of other hosts....Host cannot

communicate with all other nodes in the VSAN enabled

cluster

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base-sles has restarted on another host

You will notice that HA has kicked in and restarted base-sles on another host, esx-

04a.corp.local

Navigate to base-sles > Summary

Quorum to run the VM

Finally navigate to Datastores > vsanDatastore > Manage > Settings

Notice that the halted host is no longer responding under Disk Groups. If the failure

persists for longer than 60 minutes the components will be rebuilt on the remaining disks

in the cluster.

Conclusion

This concludes Module 2 Virtual SAN with vMotion, Storage vMotion and HA Interoperability

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Module 3 Virtual SAN Storage Level Agility


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Setting up our environment

From the Main screen, select the Home tab, and then click Hosts and Clusters

We will carry out the following steps to prepare our Lab environment for additional

exercises that we will carry out later.

As the cluster Cluster Site A has DRS set to Partially Automated due to lab requirements, we will have to migrate any VMs manually to ensure we can enter into

maintenance mode.

NOTE however vSphere DRS is fully supported with Virtual SAN (VSAN)

If a VM is already running on esx-04a.corp.local you can skip this step, otherwise

Migrate to esx-03a.corp.local

Right Click your VM, in this case, base-sles > Migrate

Complete the Wizard to Migrate the VM to esx-03a.corp.local. Remember to check

"Allow host selection within this cluster"

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Enter into Maintenance Mode

1. Put the vSphere host called esx-04a.corp.local into Maintenance Mode. Right click

the vSphere Host called esx-04a.corp.local and select the option Enter Maintenance

Mode. You may have to de-select "Move powered-off and suspended virtual

machines to other hosts in the cluster"

Notice the message pertaining maintenance mode request, as the host esx-04a.corp.local

is a part of Virtual SAN enabled cluster. Click OK

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Since the host esx-04a.corp.local is part of a DRS cluster, you will see a warning popup.

3. Click OK

Moving a vSphere Host out of the cluster

1. Move the vSphere host called esx04-a.corp.local out of cluster.

We can use a Drag and Drop operation for this.

2. Select the vSphere host called esx-04a.corp.local and drag it over the

Datacenter Site A.

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Defining your VM Storage Policies

This lesson will walk through Defining Storage Polices for your Virtual Machines.

Decisions when creating a VM Storage Policy

Storage Policies

To begin from the Home screen, select VM Storage Policies

By default, when you enable Virtual SAN (VSAN) on a Cluster, VM Storage Policies are

automatically enabled.

By using a subset of the capabilities, a vSphere admin will be able to create a storage

policy for their VM to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS).


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Creating a VM Storage Policy (1)

You should be back at VM Storage Policies.

Click the icon with the plus sign to create a new storage policy

This icon represents Create New VM Storage Policy


Give the VM Storage Policy a name.

Enter VDI-Desktops as the Name, and enter "VM Storage Policy for VDI Desktops"

for the description

Click Next to continue


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Next we get a description of rule sets.

Rule-sets are a way of using storage from different vendors, for example you can have

single bronze policy with one VSAN Rule-Set and one 3rd party storage vendor Rule-Set.

When bronze is chosen as the storage service level at VM deployment time, both VSAN and the 3rd party storage will match the requirements in the policy.

Spend a moment reading this page to learn more about rule-sets. Click Next when ready


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The next step is to select a subset of the vendor-specific capabilities.

To begin you need to select the vendor, in this case it is called VSAN.

Select Number of failures to tolerate


The next step is to add the capabilities required for the virtual machines that you wish to

deploy in your environment.

In this particular example, I wish to specify an availability requirement.

In this case, I want the VMs which have this policy associated with them to be tolerant of

at least one component failure (host, network or disk).

Click "Next"


And the nice thing about this is immediately I can tell whether or not any datastores are

capable of understanding the requirement in the matching resources window.

As you can see, my vsanDatastore is capable of understanding these requirements that I

have placed in the VM Storage Policy:

Note that this is no guarantee that the datastore can meet the requirements in the storage

service level.


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It simply means that the requirements in the VM Storage Policy can be understood by the

datastores which show up in the matching resources.

This is where we start to define the requirements for our VMs and the applications

running in the VMs.

Now, we simply tell the storage layer what the requirements are by selecting the

appropriate VM Storage Policy during VM deployment, and the storage layer takes care

of deploying the VM in such a way that it meets those requirements.

Click Next

Click Finish once you have reviewed the rules


Complete the creation of the VM Storage Policy.

This new policy should now appear in the list of VM Storage Policies.

Create a Virtual Machine and apply VM Storage Policy

Create a virtual machine, which uses the VDI-Desktops profile created earlier.

Right click on a vSphere host in the Cluster and select New Virtual Machine

Give the VM a name e.g. Windows 2008


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Create a Virtual Machine and apply VM Storage Policy (2)

When it comes to selecting storage, you can now specify a VM Storage Policy (in this

case VDI-Desktops).

This will show that vsanDatastore is Compatible as a storage device, meaning once

again that it understands the requirements placed in the storage policy.

It does not mean that the vsanDatastore will implicitly be able to accommodate the

requirements just that it understands them. This is an important point to understand about

Virtual SAN (VSAN).


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Continue with the creation of this Virtual Machine, selecting the defaults for the

remaining steps, including compatibility with vSphere 5.5 and later and Windows 2008

R2 (64-bit) as the Guest OS.

When you get to 2f. Customize hardware step, in the Virtual Hardware tab, expand

the New Hard Disk virtual hardware and you will see storage service level set to VDI-

Desktops.

Reduce the Memory to 512 MB.

Reduce the Hard Disk Size to 1GB in order for it to be replicated across hosts (the

default size is 40GB we want to reduce this as this is a small lab environment, but

needless to say it will work just fine in a physical environment)

Click Next and click Finish


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Complete the wizard. When the VM is created, look at its Summary tab and check the

compliance state in the VM Storage Policies window.

It should say Compliant with a green check mark.


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View Physical Disk Placement of the VM

As a final step, you might be interested in seeing how your virtual machines objects have been placed on the vsanDatastore.

To view the placement, select your Virtual Machine > Manage > VM Storage Policies.

If you select one of your objects, the Physical Disk Placement will show you on which

host the components of your objects reside, as shown in the example.

The RAID 1 indicates that the VMDK has a replica. This is to tolerate a failure, the

value that was set to 1 in the policy.

So we can continue to run if there is a single failure in the cluster. The witness is there to

act as a tiebreaker. If one host fails, and one component is lost, then this witness allows a

quorum of storage objects to still reside in the cluster.

Notice that all three components are on different hosts for this exact reason. At this point,

we have successfully deployed a virtual machine with a level of availability that can be

used as the base image for our VDI desktops.

Examining the layout of the object above, we can see that a RAID1 configuration has

been put in place by Virtual SAN placing each replica on different hosts.

This means that in the event of a host, disk or network failure on one of the hosts, the

virtual machine will still be available.

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Understanding the storage requirements of a VM

In this lesson, we will walk through the Storage requirements of a VM.

Overview of the Capabilities of a VM Storage Policy

When you use Virtual SAN, you can define virtual machine storage requirements, such as

performance and availability, in the form of a policy. The policy requirements are then

pushed down to the Virtual SAN layer when a virtual machine is being created. The

virtual disk is distributed across the Virtual SAN datastore to meet the requirements.

When you enable Virtual SAN on a host cluster, a single Virtual SAN datastore is

created. In addition, enabling Virtual SAN configures and registers the Virtual SAN

storage provider that uses VASA to communicate a set of the datastore capabilities to

vCenter Server.

When you know storage requirements of your virtual machines, you can create a storage

policy referencing capabilities that the datastore advertises.

You can create several policies to capture different types or classes of requirements.


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Understanding VM Storage Policies

Number of Failures To Tolerate: Defines the number of host, disk or network failures a storage object can tolerate. For n failures tolerated "n+1" copies of the object are

created and "2n+1" hosts contributing storage are required. Default value: 1, Maximum

value: 3.

This capability sets a requirement on the storage object to tolerate at least Number of Failures To Tolerate. This is the number of concurrent host, network or disk failures that may occur in the cluster and still ensuring the availability of the object. If this property is

populated, it specifies that configurations must contain at least Number of Failures To

Tolerate + 1 replicas and may also contain an additional number of witnesses to ensure

that the objects data are available (maintain quorum). Witness disks provide a quorum when failures occur in the cluster or a decision has to be made when a split-brain

situation arises.

One aspect worth noting is that any disk failure on a single host is treated as a failure for this metric. Therefore the object cannot persist if there is a disk failure on host A and

a host failure on host B when you have Number of Failures To Tolerate set to 1.

Number of Disk Stripes Per Object: The number of HDDs across which each replica of a storage object is striped. A value higher than 1 may result in better performance

(e.g. when flash read cache misses need to get serviced from HDD), but also results in

higher use of system resources. Default value: 1, Maximum value: 12.

To understand the impact of stripe width, let us examine in first in the context of write

operations and then in the context of read operations.

Since all writes go to SSD (write buffer), the value of an increased stripe width may or

may not improve performance. This is because there is no guarantee that the new stripe

will use a different SSD. The new stripe may be placed on a HDD in the same disk group

and thus the new stripe will use the same SSD. The only occasion where an increased

stripe width could add value is when there is there are many, many writes to destage from

SSD to HDD.

From a read perspective, an increased stripe width will help when you are experiencing

many read cache misses. If one takes the example of a virtual machine consuming 2,000

read operations per second and experiencing a hit rate of 90%, then there are 200 read

operations that need to be serviced from HDD. In this case, a single HDD which can

provide 150 iops, cannot be able to service all of those read operations, so an increase in

stripe width would help on this occasion to meet the virtual machine I/O requirements.

In general, the default stripe width of 1 should meet most, if not all virtual machine

workloads. Stripe width is a capability that should only change when write destaging or

read cache misses are identified as a performance constraint.


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Flash Read Cache Reservation: Flash capacity reserved as read cache for the storage object. Specified as a percentage of the logical size of the object. To be used only for

addressing read performance issues. Reserved flash capacity cannot be used for other

objects. Unreserved flash is shared fairly among all objects. Default value: 0%,

Maximum value: 100%

Cache Reservation is specified as a percentage of the logical size of the storage object

(i.e. VMDK). This is specified as a percentage value (%) with up to 4 decimal places.

This fine granular unit size is needed so that administrators can express sub 1% units.

Take the example of a 1TB disk. If we limited the read cache reservation to 1%

increments, this would mean cache reservations in increments of 10GB, which in most

cases is far too much for a single virtual machine.

Note: You do not have to set a reservation in order to get cache. All virtual machines

equally share the read cache of an SSD. The reservation should be left at 0 (default)

unless you are trying to solve a real performance problem and you believe dedicating

read cache is the solution. In the initial version of Virtual SAN, there is no proportional

share mechanism for this resource.

Object Space Reservation: Percentage of the logical size of the storage object that will

be reserved (thick provisioned) upon VM provisioning. The rest of the storage object is

thin provisioned. Default value: 0%, Maximum value: 100%

All objects deployed on VSAN are thinly provisioned. The Object Space Reservation is

the amount of space to reserve specified as a percentage (%) of the total object address

space. This is a property used for specifying a thick provisioned storage object. If Object

Space Reservation is set to 100%, all of the storage capacity requirements of the VM are

offered up front (thick).

Force Provisioning: If this option is "Yes", the object will be provisioned even if the

policy specified in the storage policy is not satisfiable with the resources currently

available in the cluster. VSAN will try to bring the object into compliance if and when

resources become available. Default value: No.

If this parameter is set to a Yes value, the object will be provisioned even if the policy

specified in the VM Storage Policy is not satisfied by the datastore. The virtual machine

will be shown as non-compliant in the VM Summary tab, and relevant VM Storage

Policy views in the UI. When additional resources become available in the cluster, VSAN

will bring this object to a compliant state.

However, if there is not enough space in the cluster to satisfy the reservation

requirements of at least one replica, the provisioning will fail even if Force

Provisioning is turned on.


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Modify VM Storage Policies (1)

Scenario: Customer notices that the VM deployed with the VDI-Desktop policy is

getting a 90% read cache hit rate.

This implies that 10% of reads need to be serviced from HDD. At peak time, this VM is

doing 3000 iops. Therefore, there are 300 reads that need to be serviced from HDD.

The specifications on the HDDs imply that each disk can do 150 iops, meaning that a

single disk cannot service these additional 300 iops.

To meet the I/O requirements of the VM implies that a stripe width of two disks should

be implemented.

Modify VM Storage Policies (2)

The first step is to edit the VDI-Desktops profile created earlier and add a stripe width

requirement to the policy.

Navigate back to Rules & Profiles, select VM Storage Policy, select the VDI-Desktop

policy and click on Edit.

In the Rule-Set 1, add a new capability called Number of disk stripes per object and set

the value to 2. This is the number of disks that the stripe will span.

Click OK


L A B G U I D E / 9 1

Resync VM with the Policy Change (1)

You will observe a popup which states that the policy is already in use by a number of

Virtual Machines.

We will need to synchronize the virtual machine with the policy after saving the

changes.

You have 2 options: Manually later or Now

Select Now and click Yes.

Resync VM with the Policy Change (2)

Staying on the VDI-Desktops policy, click on the Monitor tab. In the VMs & Virtual

Disks view, you will see that the Compliance Status is Compliant.

1 2

3

4


L A B G U I D E / 9 2

View Physical Disk Placement of the VM

This task may take a little time.

We will now re-examine the layout of the storage object to see if the request to create a

stripe width of 2 has been implemented.

From the VM Storage Polices View, select Virtual Machines > Windows 2008 > VM

Storage Policies & select the Hard Disk 1 object.

Now we can see that the disk layout has changed significantly.

Because we have requested a stripe width of two, the components that make up the

stripe are placed in a RAID-0 configuration.

And since we still have our failures to tolerate requirement, these RAID-0s must be

mirrored by a RAID-1.

And because we now have multiple components distributed across the 3 hosts, additional

witnesses are needed in case of a host failure.

1

2

3

4

1


L A B G U I D E / 9 3

Scaling out your Compute and Storage resources

In this lesson we will show that you can increase the Compute power of the Virtual SAN

cluster. We will do this by adding an additional Host to the Cluster. This host will not

have any local storage and thus will not contribute to the vsanDatastore, but will be able

to run VM's from the vsanDatastore.

We will also show that adding another Host, this time with local storage, how we can

increase the storage capacity of the Virtual SAN Datastore.

Adding a Compute Node

We previously moved the vSphere host called esx-04.a.corp.local out of the cluster.

This vSphere host does not have any local storage, so cannot contribute storage to the

vsanDatastore, but can contribute compute resources.

Drag the vSphere host back into the Cluster.

Take the host out of Maintenance Mode, right click the host and select Exit

Maintenance Mode

Verify vsanDatastore access

With the esx-04a.corp.local host selected, select the Related Objects tab and select

Datastores.

Here you will see that the vSphere host has access to the vsanDatastore, even though it

did not contribute storage to the Datastore.

Notice our vsanDatastore capacity is still around 118GB (less some vsanDatastore

overhead)

2

3

4 1


L A B G U I D E / 9 4

Add a Compute Node with Local Storage (1)

We are going to look at the ability to add another vSphere host with storage to the Virtual

SAN (VSAN) cluster and observe the scale-out capabilities of the VSAN.

At this point, we have four vSphere hosts in the cluster, although only three are

contributing local storage to the Virtual SAN datastore.

Lets check the status of the vsanDatastore. Navigate to the vsanDatastore > Summary tab.

The ~5GB consumed reflect the stripe and replicas for our current VM created earlier.


There is a fifth vSphere host (esx-05a.corp.local) in your inventory that has not yet been

added to the cluster.

We will do that now and examine how the vsanDatastore seamlessly grows to include

this new capacity.

Navigate to the cluster object in the inventory, right click and select the action Move hosts into cluster.


L A B G U I D E / 9 5


From the list of available hosts (you should only see esx-05a.corp.local), select this host.

Click OK.

Select "Put all of this host's virtual machines in the cluster's root resource pool.

Resource pools currently present on the host will be deleted"

Click OK


Once the vSphere host esx-05a.corp.local has been added to the Cluster, you will notice

that an alert that the Host cannot communicate with all the other nodes in the VSAN

enabled cluster and VSAN network is not configured


L A B G U I D E / 9 6


The next step is to add a Virtual SAN network to this host. Create a VSAN VMkernel

network adapter to this host using the distributed port group called VSAN Network.

Select the esx-05a.corp.local host.

Select the Manage tab, and select Networking.

Select VMkernel Adapters and click the Add host Networking

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