VMware pros Jase McCarty (Technical Marketer) and Max Abelardo (HCI Systems Engineer), joined us for the “Getting Started with vSAN” Chat last month! Catch up on their expert advice below and learn more in our Hands-on Lab ! Register here: http://bit.ly/2MzkxfK
Q1: Can you give us a quick elevator pitch about the latest #vSAN 6.7 Update 3 enhancements? #vSANChat
Jase: So much good stuff. Unified Management of VM’s/& CNS Persistent Volumes, lots of Capacity management & Day 2 Operations, better iSCSI, WSFC support, and some performance enhancements as well! More here: https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2019/08/13/vsan67u3-whats-new/
Q2: What is your nugget of advice for data center admins getting ready to update to vSAN 6.7 U3?
1) What to do? For starters, make sure your hardware is on the #vSAN VCG. Also (@davidstamen) is going through this now – vSAN Baselines are now based on either updates/patches or upgrades. Be sure to change baseline creation to patches in VUM once you’ve upgraded vCenter.
2) And with #vSAN 6.7 U3, we support better interoperability across vCenter versions. Going forward it will be easier to upgrade vSAN when you haven’t upgraded vCenter (within versions), just like non-vSAN clusters. #vSANChat
Q3: #VMworld is next week! What steps can I take to learn everything there is to know about #vSAN 6.7 U3? #vSANChat
Jase: Whoa @VMworld time again! Lots of sessions at VMworld around @VMware HCI and #vSAN – good start, Hyperconverged Present and Future: https://my.vmworld.com/widget/vmware/vmworld19us/us19catalog?search=HCI2733BU…
And so many more sessions… Not to mention https://storagehub.vmware.com and https://virtualblocks.com
Q4: How does vSAN 6.7 U3 give administrators more flexibility & choice for Day 2 operations such as maintenance, upgrades, or issue resolution?
Jase: Day 2 operations are much easier in vSAN 6.7 U3 with better What-If predictions, DFC change predictions, batch policy changes, automatic rebalancing, and more! Take a look at what’s new here: https://t.co/hHOd4ryKVl?amp=1
Q5: Can you talk more about the enhanced rebuild estimations with vSAN 6.7? #vSANChat
Jase: We’ve enhanced estimations for rebuild/resync operations, & we didn’t have the person working on a notorious file system’s “will take this long to copy” dialog box.
And we’ve enhanced resyncs/rebuilds with better parallelization of rebuilds that work w/adaptive resync! #vSANChat
Q6: How does #vSAN 6.7 Update 3 provide container-ready #infrastructure? #vSANChat
Jase: vSAN 6.7 U3 is Container Ready! Unified Management of VM’s & volumes for Cloud Native Applications! My buddy @mylesagray has all of the details on Virtual Blocks: ttps://t.co/GSCld2UwKp?amp=1
Q7: Capacity management is important in any storage system, what are some of the capacity management enhancements in vSAN 6.7U3? #vSANChat
Jase: Better capacity breakdown in the vSphere Client… https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/files/2019/08/67U3CAPACITY.png… batching of policy change operations, better/parallel resents, resync/rebuild estimation enhancements, and more #vSANChat More info: https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2019/08/13/vsan67u3-whats-new/
Max: Indeed, the batching of operations will help for situations that used to call for a much higher amount of slack space to complete.
Q8: I heard that there’s a Hands-on Lab on “Getting Started with vSAN,” would this be useful even if I have a basic understanding of vSAN? #vSANChat
Jase: Sure! If you have never used vSAN, or are using a dated release, the Hands-on-Lab is a great way to catch up with the latest updates or get a good understanding of how #vSAN works. #vSANChat
Misc Questions
Question: 2 racks with 3 chassis each with 4 hosts in each chassis, best practice for fault domains? #vSANChat
Answer:
Max: Fault Domains are designed to mitigate risk of a Rack Fault or site failure. The best design is the spread your hosts across 3 or more racks. Since you have Blade Chassis, you would either need to set up a Stretched Cluster between the two Racks with a Witness in Rack 3. You can leverage this link to see more best practices on Fault Domains: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.5/com.vmware.vsphere.virtualsan.doc/GUID-8491C4B0-6F94-4023-8C7A-FD7B40D0368D.html Or since you have 6 total racks, if you have a 3rd or 4th rack, you could spread the 6 Chassis across those so your fault domains work to your best advantage.
Question: Hi, tips to design vSAN from RVTools or LiveOptics?
Max: I prefer LiveOptics for a short collection of 1 – 3 days simply because it gives you a more comprehensive look at your environment. RVTools is a great free tool, but only gives you a point in time. #vSANChat
Don’t forget to register for the Sept 12 Hands-on Lab on Getting Started with vSAN! You can sign up here. Thank you to all of our participants! If you love these chats, we love your feedback! Tell us what you’d like to discuss next. Send us a DM on Twitter with your next topic request.
Resources:
vSAN -What’s new with vSAN 6.7 U3
