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Author Archives: Rafi Kabesa

About Rafi Kabesa

Rafael Kabesa is a product marketing manager at VMware, and is currently working on VMware's Hyper-converged Infrastructure (HCI) offerings. Rafael has been working in the technology space for 9 years, and he holds a B.Sc in Computer Science, and an MBA. Follow him on twitter: @rafikabesa

vROps Management Pack for Virtual SAN Beta is Now Open

If you already know you want to take part in the beta, sign up here: http://www.vmware.com/go/vrops4vsan-beta

One of the most requested features among Virtual SAN 5.5 customers is enabling greater visibility to what happens “under the hood”. The Virtual SAN team developed a new health check plug-in that will help customers tackle underlying hardware issues as part of the v6.0 release (read more here). In addition to that the vRealize operations team developed an advanced set of dashboards and tools aimed at making Virtual SAN users life much easier.

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VMware Virtual SAN Health Check Plug-in Now Available

The VMware Virtual SAN team is proud to announce the general availability of the new VMware Virtual SAN Health Check Plug-in.

The Health Check Plug-in was created to address one of the pain points many storage solution suffer from – hardware health and configuration – and VSAN is no different in that respect. The Health Check Plug-in will address this issue and in the same time maintain one of Virtual SAN’s core benefits – keeping things simple. The simplicity aspect comes into effect in two ways:

It’s a simple vCenter plug-in seamlessly integrating with the rest of the vCenter UI – maintaining the single pane of glass benefit
It provides clear and detailed warnings and alerts including suggested ways to solve issues when they appear

Virtual SAN Health Check Plug-in implements several checks including:

Hardware Compatibility – scans your VSAN cluster and detects components not on HCL. Also will make sure you have the right drivers and firmware
Networking Configuration – checks for potential hosts getting disconnected, cluster partitioning and other network related issues
Limits Health – makes sure the cluster stays operational in cases like a host failure
Storage Device Health – checks for disk capacity issues, congestion, metadata health and other potential device problems
Virtual Machines Objects health – checks for objects metadata health, and other potential object complications

Overview screen of Virtual SAN Health Check Plug-in:

In addition to the ongoing monitoring of the Virtual SAN 6 cluster health, the Health Check Plug-in enables a set of proactive tests like:

VM creation
Storage Performance
Multicast Performance

Check out this short demo video to see how the Health Check Plug-in helps overcome a networking problem:

The Health Check Plug-in is a free vCenter Plug-in that is downloadable under the drivers & tools tabs in the Virtual SAN download page. If you are not a Virtual SAN 6 customer, you can still try out the plug-in by downloading your free 60 days evaluation copy – www.vmware.com/go/try-vsan-dl-en

You can also try our hosted evaluation by going to the Virtual SAN 6 hands on lab – www.vmware.com/go/try-vsan-hol

VSAN Evaluation – How to use the VSAN sizing tool – Part 2

This blog post is the second in our series of blog posts of VSAN Evaluation using our integrated sizing and TCO tool ( vsantco.vmware.com ). For part 1 that discusses VM profiling go here:

VSAN Evaluation – How to use the VSAN sizing tool – Part 1

In this part of the blog series we will discuss how to adjust our default recommended ready nodes profiles to your specific scenario. I’m aware this part can be somewhat confusing, but after a few tries I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it and can do this in a matter of minutes.

First, let’s start by explaining what a Virtual SAN Ready Node is. Virtual SAN is a pure software product, but using it with non-certified hardware can have some unwanted results. This is why we decided to partner with all the major OEMs to create ready-to-go hardware solutions called ready nodes that can also be used as a reference architecture and be customized to your preferences. My team member and VSAN Product Manager, Rakesh Radhakrishnan, wrote a blog ( Virtual SAN Ready Nodes – Ready, Set, Go!) almost a year ago answering most common questions around the topic. Also check out the most updated list of ready nodes here – Virtual SAN Ready Nodes – and our Virtual SAN Hardware Quick Reference Guide .

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VSAN Evaluation – How to use the sizing tool – Part 1

Sizing a vSphere environment for VMware Virtual SAN is not an easy task and if this is how you look like when you approach it you should continue reading. Nevertheless, even if you already did sizing for VSAN in the past there are some nuances that you might want to pay attention to.

First, before we go into explaining how to size for VSAN, it is imperative you understand why this is important:

If you undersize VSAN for your environment you might not get the performance you expect or won’t have the capacity you need for your virtual machines
If you oversize VSAN you might end-up with a higher hardware bill that can be at least partially deferred until you actually need to grow VSAN to that size – remember you can grow as you-go, no need for large upfront investments

OK, so when can I get this tool you ask? It is already available, just go to VSANTCO.VMware.com – the tool was recently updated to also allow you to size VSAN with an All Flash architecture.

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vRealize Operations Management Pack for Virtual SAN Beta – Early Sign-up

If you already heard the exciting news about VMware new offerings – vSphere 6, Virtual SAN 6 and vSphere Virtual Volumes – and thought it can’t get any better, we have a small surprise for you. Virtual SAN 6.0 includes a host of new features including high performance snapshots and clones, all flash Virtual SAN with intelligent 2-tier model, failure domains and more. One of the most requested features among Virtual SAN 5.5 customers is enabling greater visibility to what happens “under the hood”. The Virtual SAN team developed a new health dashboard that will help customers tackle underlying hardware issues as part of the v6.0 release, but in addition to that the vRealize operations team developed an advanced set of dashboards aimed at making Virtual SAN users life much easier.

The Virtual SAN team along with the vRealize Operations team are thrilled to offer you a unique opportunity to beta test the new vRealize Operations Management Pack for Storage Devices. The management pack will feature advanced insight into Virtual SAN through advanced analytics to enable rapid troubleshooting and cluster optimization.

We will share more details closer to the start of the beta program which will kick off in Q1 2015. If you would like to get more information and be on the list of people who get an invitation to participate in the beta, please sign up here – www.vmware.com/go/vrops4vsan-beta

Check out the vROps MPSD blog post for more details – http://blogs.vmware.com/management/2015/02/vsan-simplifying-sddc-storage-operations-with-vrealize-operations-management-pack-for-storage-devices.html