donohoe1
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Is VMware VSAN ready for business critical VMs?
We're looking at a refresh of our virtual environment late this year or early next, and I'm taking the opportunity to reexamine our architecture. Currently we have a 9TB SAN with dual everything connecting to three hosts with a total of 55 VMs. However, even with this I don't like that the SAN is single point of failure, especially since we've had a dual controller reset on the SAN before (absolutely not fun). However, I understand a physical SAN, I understand its limitations, and it's a proven technology.
VSAN makes a lot of sense to me on the theoretical level, and I can see it being the future of virtualized storage. However, it's only been a year since VMware released their VSAN product.
So, is VMware VSAN ready for a production environment with business critical VMs on it?
VSAN makes a lot of sense to me on the theoretical level, and I can see it being the future of virtualized storage. However, it's only been a year since VMware released their VSAN product.
So, is VMware VSAN ready for a production environment with business critical VMs on it?
ASKER
What are the needs where it might still need to grow a little?
1 thing off the top of my mind, deduplication, if that is a feature you use right now ... You need to make sure your hardware is VSAN ready, same goes for VMware itself of course, but still, there are things to consider... Things are improving in VSAN6 though ... Optimally you also need 4 hosts, 3 works, but 4 is recommended...
VSAN 6.0 is!
We have been using it in beta for 18 months!
Test drive it and trial!
We have been using it in beta for 18 months!
Test drive it and trial!
ASKER
We don't do anything special with our SAN. No snapshots, no dedup, no cloning, nothing. It's only a (fairly) reliable place to store our VMs. Our number one priority is reliability.
SOLUTION
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ASKER
We have plenty of room.
We're planning on running four hosts regardless, so the question would be are they hooked up to a SAN or do we load them up with local storage and run a VSAN?
As I mentioned, my largest concern is having the most reliable solution. We've already had a dual controller reset on our SAN which effectively took down our entire network. Not to mention, firmware updates on the SAN are tricky and difficult beasts.
We're planning on running four hosts regardless, so the question would be are they hooked up to a SAN or do we load them up with local storage and run a VSAN?
As I mentioned, my largest concern is having the most reliable solution. We've already had a dual controller reset on our SAN which effectively took down our entire network. Not to mention, firmware updates on the SAN are tricky and difficult beasts.
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Valso remember vSAN is NOT a bolt on like VSA its part of the ESXi OS!
Jusy needs enabling with a license!
Jusy needs enabling with a license!
My favourite source to read up on all things vsan is here