Welcome to “Feature in Five,” our byte-sized videos of industry-leading VMware product solutions, all in—you guessed—five short minutes! Last time, we video-profiled vSAN Data Placement and Availability; in this edition, we turn our attention to the vSAN Cluster Quickstart wizard.
vSAN 6.7 U1 and vSphere 6.7 U1 introduced Quickstart, a cluster creation wizard that guides users through configuring hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) clusters in a few simple steps. In contrast to previously labor-intensive and error-prone processes, Quickstart consolidates the workflow and groups common tasks to make deploying and expanding clusters effortless. It improves efficiency, accuracy, and consistency by eliminating the need for scripting and implementing vendor recommended best practices. Using VMware Validated Designs, comprehensive and extensively-tested blueprints for software-defined data centers, and the user’s input, Quickstart automatically configures a cluster.
Cluster Quickstart walks users through three central steps:
- Cluster basics: It enables core operational services, such as DRS, vSphere HA, and vSAN.
- Adding hosts: Administrators can add multiple hosts simultaneously using the same credentials. At this step, they can also review any health issues or version variations.
- Cluster configuration: After users add hosts to the cluster, they are guided through the configuration process. Quickstart allows them to set up network settings for vMotion and vSAN traffic, distributed switches, and vSAN datastore. It also navigates users through claiming disks while making intelligent guesses about cache and capacity. Additionally, Quickstart helps users create fault domains that tell them how many failures the cluster can tolerate with the current configuration. Users can customize clusters with advanced settings, such as encryption and deduplication, too.
In conclusion, vSAN Cluster Quickstart enables users to quickly configure vSAN and non-vSAN clusters in just a few clicks. By streamlining the workflow and reducing the number of manual tasks, Quickstart results in overall better performance and seamless operations. To learn more about this feature, watch the demo here.
Try our vSAN 6.7 Hands-On Lab here, and our vSAN 6.7 Advanced Hands-On Lab here!
