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Essential Virtual San (Vsan)
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Table of Contents

Foreword by Ben Fathi xvii

Foreword by Charles Fan xix

About the Authors xxi

About the Technical Reviewers xxiii

Acknowledgments xxv

Reader Services xxvii

Introduction xxix

Chapter 1 Introduction to VSAN 1

Software-Defi ned Datacenter 1

Software-Defi ned Storage 2

Hyper-Convergence/Server SAN Solutions 3

Introducing Virtual SAN 4

What Is Virtual SAN? 5

What Does VSAN Look Like to an Administrator? 8

Summary 11

Chapter 2 VSAN Prerequisites and Requirements for Deployment 13

VMware vSphere 5.5 13

  ESXi 5.5 U1 14

  ESXi Boot Considerations 14

VSAN Requirements 15

  VMware Hardware Compatibility Guide 15

  VSAN Ready Nodes 15

  Storage Controllers 16

  Magnetic Disks 18

  Flash Devices 19

Network Requirements 20

  Network Interface Cards 20

  Supported Virtual Switch Types 21

  VMkernel Network 21

  VSAN Network Traffi c 22

  Jumbo Frames 22

  NIC Teaming 23

  Network I/O Control 23

 Firewall Ports 23

Summary 24

Chapter 3 VSAN Installation and Confi guration 25

VSAN Networking 25

VMkernel Network for VSAN 26

VSAN Network Confi guration: VMware Standard Switch 27

VSAN Network Confi guration: vSphere Distributed Switch 28

  Step 1: Create the Distributed Switch 28

  Step 2: Create a Distributed Port Group 29

  Step 3: Build VMkernel Ports 30

Possible Network Confi guration Issues 33

Network I/O Control Confi guration Example 35

Design Considerations: Distributed Switch and Network I/O Control 38

  Scenario 1: Redundant 10GbE Switch Without “Link Aggregation” Capability 39

  Scenario 2: Redundant 10GbE Switch with Link Aggregation Capability 42

Creating a VSAN Cluster 45

    The Role of Disk Groups 45

  Disk Group Maximums 46

  Why Confi gure Multiple Disk Groups in VSAN? 46

  SSD to Magnetic Disk Ratio 47

  Automatically Add Disks to VSAN Disk Groups 48

  Handling Is_local or Is_SSD Issues 48

  Manually Adding Disks to a VSAN Disk Group 50

  Disk Group Creation Example 50

  VSAN Datastore Properties 53

Summary 53

Chapter 4 VM Storage Policies on VSAN 55

Introducing Storage Policy-Based Management in a VSAN Environment 56

  Number of Failures to Tolerate 58

  Number of Disk Stripes Per Object 59

  Flash Read Cache Reservation 61

  Object Space Reservation 61

  Force Provisioning 61

VASA Vendor Provider 62

  An Introduction to VASA 62

  Storage Providers 63

VSAN Storage Providers: Highly Available 63

  Changing VM Storage Policy On-the-Fly 64

  Objects, Components, and Witnesses 68

VM Storage Policies 68

  Enabling VM Storage Policies 69

  Creating VM Storage Policies 70

  Assigning a VM Storage Policy During VM Provisioning 70

Summary 71

Chapter 5 Architectural Details 73

Distributed RAID 73

Objects and Components 74

  Component Limits 76

  Virtual Machine Storage Objects 77

  Virtual Machine Home Namespace 77

  Virtual Machine Swap 78

  VMDKs and Deltas 78

  Witnesses and Replicas 79

  Object Layout 79

VSAN Software Components 82

  Component Management 83

  Data Paths for Objects 83

  Object Ownership 83

  Placement and Migration for Objects 84

  Cluster Monitoring, Membership, and Directory Services 85

  Host Roles (Master, Slave, Agent) 85

  Reliable Datagram Transport 86

On-Disk Formats 86

  Flash Devices 86

  Magnetic Disks 86

VSAN I/O Flow 87

  The Role of the SSD 87

  Anatomy of a VSAN Read 88

  Anatomy of a VSAN Write 90

  Retiring Writes to Magnetic Disks 91

  Data Locality 91

Storage Policy-Based Management 92

VSAN Capabilities 92

  Number of Failures to Tolerate Policy Setting 93

  Best Practice for Number of Failures to Tolerate 95

  Stripe Width Policy Setting 96

  Striping on VSAN Outside of Policy Setting 98

  Stripe Width Maximum 100

  Stripe Width Confi guration Error 101

  Stripe Width Chunk Size 102

  Stripe Width Best Practice 102

  Flash Read Cache Reservation Policy Setting 103

  Object Space Reservation Policy Setting 103

  VM Home Namespace Revisited 104

  Swap Revisited 104

  How to Examine the VM Swap Storage Object 104

  Delta Disk / Snapshot Caveat 106

  Verifying How Much Space Is Actually Consumed 106

  Force Provisioning Policy Setting 107

  Witnesses and Replicas: Failure Scenarios 107

  Recovery from Failure 110

  What About Stretching VSAN? 113

Summary 115

Chapter 6 VM Storage Policies and Virtual Machine Provisioning 117

Policy Setting: Number of Failures to Tolerate = 1 117

Policy Setting: Failures to Tolerate = 1, Stripe Width = 2 124

Policy Setting: Failures to Tolerate = 2, Stripe Width = 2 128

Policy Setting: Failures to Tolerate = 1, Object Space Reservation = 50 Percent 132

Policy Setting: Failures to Tolerate = 1, Object Space Reservation = 100 Percent 136

Default Policy 138

Summary 141

Chapter 7 Management and Maintenance 143

Host Management 143

  Adding Hosts to the Cluster 143

  Removing Hosts from the Cluster 145

  ESXCLI VSAN Cluster Commands 145

Maintenance Mode 146

Recommended Maintenance Mode Option for Updates and Patching 148

Disk Management 149

  Adding a Disk Group 149

Removing a Disk Group 150

  Adding Disks to the Disk Group 152

  Removing Disks from the Disk Group 153

Wiping a Disk 153

  ESXCLI VSAN Disk Commands 154

Failure Scenarios 155

  Magnetic Disk Failure 156

  Flash Device Failure 157

  Host Failure 158

  Network Partition 159

  Disk Full Scenario 164

Thin Provisioning Considerations 165

vCenter Management 166

  vCenter Server Failure Scenario 167

  Running vCenter Server on VSAN 168

  Bootstrapping vCenter Server 168

Summary 171

Chapter 8 Interoperability 173

vMotion 174

Storage vMotion 174

vSphere HA 175

  vSphere HA Communication Network 175

  vSphere HA Heartbeat Datastores 176

  vSphere HA Metadata 177

  vSphere HA Admission Control 177

  vSphere HA Recommended Settings 177

  vSphere HA Protecting VSAN and Non-VSAN VMs 178

Distributed Resource Scheduler 178

Storage DRS 179

Storage I/O Control 179

Distributed Power Management 180

VMware Data Protection 180

  Backup VMs from a VSAN Datastore Using VDP 181

  Restore VMs to a VSAN Datastore Using VDP 181

vSphere Replication 183

  Replicate to VSAN at a Recovery Site 183

  Recover Virtual Machine 184

Virtual Machine Snapshots 185

vCloud Director 185

VMware Horizon View 186

  VSAN Support for Horizon View 186

  VM Storage Policies on VMware View 187

  View Confi guration 187

  Changing the Default Policy 190

  Other View Considerations 190

vCenter Operations 191

vSphere 5.5 62TB VMDK 192

Fault Tolerance 192

Stretched/vSphere Metro Storage Cluster 193

PowerCLI 193

C# Client 193

vCloud Automation Service 193

Host Profi les 194

Auto-Deploy 194

Raw Device Mappings 195

vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration 195

Microsoft Clustering Services 195

Summary 195

Chapter 9 Designing a VSAN Cluster 197

Sizing Constraints 197

Failures to Tolerate = 1, Stripe Width = 1 199

Flash to Magnetic Disk Ratio 200

Designing for Performance 201

  Impact of the Disk Controller 202

VSAN Performance Capabilities 206

  VMware View Performance 207

Design and Sizing Tools 208

Scenario 1: Where to Start 209

  Determining Your Host Confi guration 211

Scenario 2 213

  Determining Your Host Confi guration 215

Scenario 3 217

  Determining Your Host Confi guration 218

Summary 220

Chapter 10 Troubleshooting, Monitoring, and Performance 221

ESXCLI 221

  esxcli vsan datastore 222

  esxcli vsan network 223

  esxcli vsan storage 224

  esxcli vsan cluster 226

  esxcli vsan maintenancemode 227

  esxcli vsan policy 228

  esxcli vsan trace 230

  Additional Non-ESXCLI Commands for Troubleshooting VSAN 231

Ruby vSphere Console 236

  VSAN Commands 237

  SPBM Commands 256

  PowerCLI for VSAN 259

VSAN and SPBM APIs 261

  Enable/Disable VSAN (Automatic Claiming) 261

  Manual Disk Claiming 261

  Change the VM Storage Policy 262

  Enter Maintenance Mode 262

  Create and Delete Directories on a VSAN Datastore 262

  CMMDS 262

  SPBM 263

Troubleshooting VSAN on the ESXi 263

  Log Files 263

  VSAN Traces 264

  VSAN VMkernel Modules and Drivers 264

Performance Monitoring 265

  ESXTOP Performance Counters for VSAN 265

  vSphere Web Client Performance Counters for VSAN 266

  VSAN Observer 267

Sample VSAN Observer Use Case 273

Summary 276

TOC, 9780133854992, 7/3/14

 

About the Author

Cormac Hogan is a storage architect in the Integration Engineering team at VMware. Cormac was one of the first VMware employees at the EMEA headquarters in Cork, Ireland, back in 2005, and has previously held roles in VMware’s Technical Marketing and Support organizations. Cormac has written a number of storage-related white papers and has given numerous presentations on storage best practices and new features. Cormac is the owner of CormacHogan.com, a blog site dedicated to storage and virtualization. He can be followed on twitter @CormacJHogan.

 

Duncan Epping is a principal architect working for VMware R&D. Duncan is responsible for exploring new possibilities with existing products and features, researching new business opportunities for VMware. Duncan specializes in software-defined storage, hyperconverged platforms, and availability solutions. Duncan was among the first VMware Certified Design Experts (VCDX 007). Duncan is the owner of Yellow-Bricks.com and author of various books, including the VMware vSphere Clustering Technical Deepdive series.

 

He can be followed on twitter @DuncanYB.

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