The Virtual SAN product team is pleased to announce that last week we released new certified components (I/O controllers, SSDs and HDDs), new Ready Nodes and a new Hardware Quick Reference Guide for Virtual SAN 6.0 along with a new and improved VCG page. Please see updated links below:
Updated Virtual SAN Hardware Quick Reference Guide
Updated Virtual SAN Ready Nodes
How many new components and Ready Nodes do we have listed for Virtual SAN 6.0?
We now have 26 I/O controllers, 170 SSDs and 125 HDDs (and counting) supported on Virtual SAN 6.0. In addition to the Virtual SAN 5.5 Ready Nodes, we have 8 new Ready Nodes for Virtual SAN 6.0 (Cisco – 4 Hybrid, Dell – 1 Hybrid, Hitachi – 1 Hybrid, Super Micro – 1 All Flash & 1 Hybrid).
We expect this list to grow very quickly. We have a number of components that are currently getting certified and we plan to add new certified devices and Ready Nodes to the VCG on a weekly basis.
How does the Virtual SAN Certification process work?
The VMware Virtual SAN team treats hardware certification very seriously. I/O controllers play a very important part in determining the stability and performance of a Virtual SAN cluster and need to be able to withstand high I/O under stress conditions.
The I/O controllers are put through a rigorous I/O certification process while the HDD, SSD and Ready Nodes are put through stringent paper qualifications.
We run a I/O controller card through a 3-week-long certification test plan (the certification is done by VMware or by the partner) that stress tests the card across many dimensions, particularly in high load and failure scenarios to ensure the card can withstand the level of I/O pushed down by Virtual SAN even in the most adverse situations (example: rebuilds and resyncs triggered due to host failures).
If there are issues identified, we work closely with our controller vendor/OEM partner to resolve them and re-run the entire test suite after resolution. Sometimes an updated firmware or driver version addressing the issue is required from the vendors before we can proceed with more testing.
Only controllers that fully pass the test criteria laid out in the above process are listed on the Virtual SAN VCG.
Are separate I/O controller certifications required for different releases?
Yes, we require controllers to be recertified whenever any of the following change:
- Virtual SAN Release version (eg: 5.5 to 6.0)
- The controller driver version
- The controller firmware version
We also certify the same controller separately for Virtual SAN All Flash vs Hybrid since the caching and I/O mechanism are different for these two configurations and we expect controllers to behave differently with varying levels of I/O.
What about certification of PCIe-SSD devices?
PCIe-SSDs are nothing but SSDs with an on-board I/O controller in a PCIe form factor. Therefore, these require the same level of due diligence as required by standard I/O controllers. As a result, we are putting these devices through the same level of rigorous certification as we do for I/O controllers.
VMware is working very closely with partners to certify the first set of PCIe-SSDs for Virtual SAN 6.0 over the coming weeks.
What are the new updates to the VCG page?
The Virtual SAN VCG page has been enhanced to allow users to easily build or choose their All Flash configurations in addition to Hybrid configurations. Since All Flash Virtual SAN requires SSDs of different endurance and performance spec for caching and performance tiers (See Updated Virtual SAN Hardware Quick Reference Guide for details on specs), we have enhanced the VCG to help users easily pick SSDs for the tier they are interested in.
We have also introduced a new SSD filter called “Virtual SAN type” to help easily filter our All Flash vs Hybrid configurations. Furthermore, we have added a filter called “Tier” to help you filter our Virtual SAN hybrid caching, Virtual SAN All Flash caching and Virtual SAN capacity caching tiers.
The endurance rating for SSDs are now displayed on the VCG in TBW (Terabytes written over 5 years) as opposed to DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) which was used previously.
What are the controllers that are currently in the certification queue and when do we expect them to get certified?
Please see the attached list of controllers that are currently undergoing Virtual SAN certification
Note: In many cases, we rely on our partners to provide driver/firmware fixes for controller issues so if there are delays in receiving these updates from partners, the certification timelines may get pushed out.
Having said that, we are making good progress on most of the controllers listed in the attached document and expect them to follow our standard certification process.
On a similar note, Ready Nodes are primarily dependent on the controllers getting certified, so as you see new controllers on the VCG for 6.0 certified, Ready Nodes including those controllers will follow.