Big VMware releases deserve big tweet chats, right?! That’s why, in addition to our vSAN pros, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson, we teamed up with VMware’s vSphere and Cloud Foundation experts for a very special #vSANChat on March 26.
We covered all the news about vSAN 7 coming out of the recent VMware Application Modernization event. At the same time, the other VMware teams hosted their own virtual chats using the hashtags #vSphereChat and #VMwareVCFchat. There was a ton of great information shared by all! Read on to see a full recap of questions and answers from our portion of the chat.
Q1: What does it mean to be able to have access to cloud-native storage? (Tweet link)
Pete: Cloud native storage is storage that can be consumed by a developer or an automated system via easy to use APIs and tooling they are already familiar with in a self-service fashion, without having to interact with the IT Operator, via ticketing or otherwise.
John: Sounds like it’s ready to automatically deploy whatever hipster container based application you read about this morning on hacker news!
Q2: How does #vSAN 7 simplify the #HCI lifecycle management? (Tweet link)
Pete: One of the more interesting features in #vSAN7 is vSphere Lifecycle Management. This is a real step in the direction of unified lifecycle management. ESXi, vSAN, firmware and drivers all in one interface. Not too shabby
John: Also worth noting that vSAN being built into vSphere is one less thing to have to check compatibility against ESXi, and something VMware Cloud Foundation Can also automate update for.
Q3: How does #vSAN 7 build on the theme of #futureproof infrastructure? (Tweet link)
Pete: vSAN is the foundational element for private and public clouds. It’s the basis for VMware Cloud Foundation as well VMware Cloud on AWS.
John: vSAN always adopts the newest hardware fast! Day Zero Intel Storage Optane drives as one example.
Q4: How does #vSAN 7 simplify file services provisioning? (Tweet link)
John: Myles Gray has a great video demo of how it automates creation of shares, and use tags and volume IDs to provide end to end visibility when using the CSI driver.
Pete: Last week John and I had a good discussion on vLCM and File Services on the #vSAN7 [podcast] episode.
Q5: Explain how #vSAN 7 simplifies #IT operations. (Tweet link)
Pete: Quite a few things new in #vSAN7 for IT Ops. Improved consistency in VM Capacity reporting, and a new vSAN memory metric available in API and the UI. vSAN also now identifies replicated objects by vSphere Replication. This is really cool!
Q6: #vSAN 7 has enhanced resiliency by addressing what kinds of scenarios? (Tweet link)
Pete: The first one that comes to mind for me would be support for much larger storage devices. 32TB might go nice with some vSAN File Services. Another is hot-plug support. This should minimize host restarts.
Q7: How will #vSAN 7 work with #vSphere7 and @VMware #CloudFoundation 4? (Tweet link)
Pete: #vSAN is always the storage for the Management domain, and can also be used for the compute workload domains. The whole idea behind VMware Cloud Foundation is to simplify the deployment and operations of the hybrid cloud. It just makes sense that #vSAN is the foundational storage. Lot’s of great content [here] for those just getting started with VMware Cloud Foundation and #vSAN.
Q8: In your opinion, why is this #vSAN 7 release so important? (Tweet link)
Pete: This is a pretty significant release. Simpler and unified lifecycle management, unified block and file services, and improved efficiency and operations. Not too shabby
John: vLCM sets up a foundation for making lifecycle of hardware a lot easier, File Services augments existing block automation in the CSI driver to make storage in K8s a lot easier.
Q9: What is your favorite feature of #vSAN 7? (Tweet link)
Pete: Wow, that’s a tough one.. I have to say I am pretty excited about the vSphere with Kubernetes and Cloud Native Storage. This is a game change for VMware and its customers.
Thank you for joining us for our latest #vSANChat! Stay tuned for the topic of our next chat, which will take place on the last Thursday of the month. Until then, you can find us on Twitter!
vSAN 7 Resources
