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Essential Virtual SAN (VSAN): Administrator's Guide to VMware Virtual SAN

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Essential Virtual SAN (VSAN): Administrator's Guide to VMware Virtual SAN

By Cormac Hogan, Duncan Epping
Published Jul 25, 2014 by VMware Press. Part of the VMware Press Technology series.

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The first book on VMware Virtual SAN -- from two of VMware's "superstar" experts, Cormac Hogan and Duncan Epping
How Virtual SAN works, and what it offers
How to architect Virtual SAN environments for maximum value
How to avoid potential "gotchas" and troubleshoot problems

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Description

Copyright 2015
Edition: 1st

Book
ISBN-10: 0-13-385499-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-385499-2

Understand and implement VMware Virtual SAN: the heart of tomorrow’s Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC)

VMware’s breakthrough Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) initiative can help you virtualize your entire datacenter: compute, storage, networks, and associated services. Central to SDDC is VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN): a fully distributed storage architecture seamlessly integrated into the hypervisor and capable of scaling to meet any enterprise storage requirement.

Now, the leaders of VMware’s wildly popular Virtual SAN previews have written the first authoritative guide to this pivotal technology. You’ll learn what Virtual SAN is, exactly what it offers, how to implement it, and how to maximize its value.

Writing for administrators, consultants, and architects, Cormac Hogan and Duncan Epping show how Virtual SAN implements both object-based storage and a policy platform that simplifies VM storage placement. You’ll learn how Virtual SAN and vSphere work together to dramatically improve resiliency, scale-out storage functionality, and control over QoS.

Both an up-to-the-minute reference and hands-on tutorial, Essential Virtual SAN uses realistic examples to demonstrate Virtual SAN’s most powerful capabilities. You’ll learn how to plan, architect, and deploy Virtual SAN successfully, avoid gotchas, and troubleshoot problems once you’re up and running.

Coverage includes

Understanding the key goals and concepts of Software-Defined Storage and Virtual SAN technology
Meeting physical and virtual requirements for safe Virtual SAN implementation
Installing and configuring Virtual SAN for your unique environment
Using Storage Policy Based Management to control availability, performance, and reliability
Simplifying deployment with VM Storage Policies
Discovering key Virtual SAN architectural details: caching I/O, VASA, witnesses, pass-through RAID, and more
Ensuring efficient day-to-day Virtual SAN management and maintenance
Interoperating with other VMware features and products
Designing and sizing Virtual SAN clusters
Troubleshooting, monitoring, and performance optimization

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Sample Content

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Administrator's Guide to VMware Virtual SAN: Introduction to VSAN

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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

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