VSAN Assessment: What’s New

The VSAN Assessment is a free SaaS based tool which gives you a comprehensive analysis of your vSphere environment and highlights the value of VSAN if implemented. With the VSAN Assessment you can:

1. Identify which VMs are a suitable candidate for VSAN – All Flash or Hybrid
2. View Sizing and Hardware recommendations (# of servers, SSD)
3. View estimated storage CAPEX and OPEX savings
4. Perform detailed TCO/Sizing by integration with TCO/Sizing tool

With the tool being live for over a year, we recognized an opportunity to enhance certain areas, namely:

1. Semi-offline mode: For customers concerned about sending any data to the cloud or have limited or no internet access
2. All Flash: Incorporating TCO benefits (storage efficiency) in recommending All Flash in addition to workload trace analysis

Semi Offline Mode for running VSAN Assessment

Picture this: You are a customer who is interested in running a VSAN Assessment for your workloads. However, you are either reluctant to send data to the cloud or your workloads run in an area with limited or no internet access. In either scenario, having data sent from your workloads automatically to the cloud, which is the current mechanism, is not feasible. This is where the semi-offline mode comes in.

In this mode, the collector is downloaded and configured on-prem. All the data samples are also collected on-prem and once the analysis is done, an Admin can review the output logs to check for sensitive or missing data. After this, he can manually upload the collected data into the cloud and Voila! A VSAN Assessment Report is made available.

Keep in mind, this feature is only available for the VSAN Assessment and it is an optional mode. Customers still have the option of allowing the data traces to be automatically uploaded into the cloud.

TCO Benefits (Storage Efficiency) in recommending All Flash

1. Currently only VM traces are analyzed as part of the assessment
2. We have now introduced CAPEX calculations due to storage efficiency as a major factor for recommending All Flash
3. There is a clear distinction between raw physical capacity and usable capacity with storage efficiency which is critical for All Flash

4. Dedup and FTT inputs have been implemented along with reference guides for computing these values for All Flash and Hybrid

These features can be viewed in the Demo below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpgjI3uT3XE&feature=youtu.be

The video doesn’t have a voice-over but the process has been set-up so that you can follow along easily through the step-by-step process.

With these features you can now seamlessly perform a VSAN assessment irrespective of your workloads’ environment and effortlessly view your savings when using All Flash or Hybrid VSAN.

We are showcasing the VSAN Assessment during VMworld 2016 – Las Vegas. Stop by the Delano Hotel on 28th and 29th August to talk to us and learn more about how you can begin a VSAN Assessment.

As we go forward, we would love to hear from you about new features that we can add to the VSAN Assessment. You can contact us at [email protected] with any questions or feedback you may have for us.

So, are you ready to get started? Request a free vSAN Assessment today to see what you could save!