vSAN Quick Questions

Ready to further your technical vSAN knowledge? With our new vSAN Quick Questions YouTube series led by John Nicholson and Pete Koehler of VMware, there has never been a better time to achieve a deeper understanding of vSAN storage virtualization!

For 100 days, the vSAN team will share a new Quick Questions video daily on our Twitter channel. That’s right, every day! These insightful videos range from 1.5-5 minutes in length, so they’re perfect little bits of wisdom you can soak up at any time. Each week, we’ll upload the questions shared on Twitter as a centralized resource, so just in case you miss one, be sure to bookmark this page.

Time to get started on this 100 days of vSAN journey. Watch what we’ve posted so far in the links below:

Question 1:  What are the top considerations when migrating a VM to a vSAN cluster?

Question 2: How do I replace or upgrade a vSAN witness host appliance?

Question 3: What is a vSAN Disk Group?

Question 4: How much capacity can I use in a vSAN cluster?

Question 5: What is the difference between VM Encryption and vSAN Encryption?

Question 6: Can I use different types of drives in a vSAN cluster?

Question 7: Can I use 100Gb network cards in my vSAN hosts?

Question 8: How do I troubleshoot vSAN networking performance?

Question 9: Why do I need a 3rd host or a witness for vSAN to store data?

Question 10: How do I configure VMware HA for a vSAN cluster?

Question 11: How can I make a vSAN host reboot faster?

Question 12: How often should I patch or upgrade vSAN?

Question 13: When should I use vSAN Deduplication and Compression?

Question 14: Can I use vSAN in the cloud?

Question 15: Should I use the vSphere NKP or an external KMS for vSAN Encryption?

Question 16: Which data placement scheme should I use in vSAN – RAID-1 or RAID-5/6?

Question 17: How many disk groups in a vSAN host do I need?

Question 18: What type of cache device should I choose? SATA, SAS, or NVMe?

Question 19: What are the benefits of NVMe and Optane devices in vSAN?

Question 20: What should I consider when using SATA drives for vSAN?

Question 21: What type of device should I use in the vSAN capacity tier?

Question 22: What type of boot device should be used with vSAN?

Question 23: Can I mix different servers in the same cluster with vSAN?

Question 24: Can I mix hosts with AMD and Intel CPUs in the same vSAN cluster?

Question 25: How do I migrate VMs to a vSAN cluster?

Question 26: How can Site Recovery Manager (SRM) be used with vSAN?

Question 27: Considerations when using Windows Server Failover Clusters with vSAN?

Question 28: How does the vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) work with vSAN?

Question 29: What networking failover methods are available in vSAN?

Question 30: How do I patch or upgrade my vSAN cluster faster?

Question 31: How has the patching of a vSAN 2-node cluster improved?

Question 32: How does vSAN handle a storage device failure?

Question 33: What happens when I pull a storage device from a vSAN host?

Question 34: How do I size a vSAN cluster?

Question 35: Should I choose 10Gb or 25/100Gb for my vSAN network?

Question 36: What are some quick design tips when using HCI Mesh?

Question 37: How can I properly size vSAN for my capacity requirements?

Question 38: What happens if my vSAN cluster loses power?

Question 39: What do I do if my vSAN cluster capacity is getting low?

Question 40: What are the top tips for networking in a vSAN environment?

Question 41: Should I use Link Aggregation Groups (LAGs) with vSAN?

Question 42: What kind of Network Interface Card (NIC) should I buy for my vSAN hosts?

Question 43: How can vSAN be used with RDMA?

Question 44: How do I monitor the performance of vSAN?

Question 45: What is the best way to test the performance of vSAN?

Question 46: What is the best way to determine if a vSAN cluster is healthy?

Question 47: What is quorum voting, and how does it work in vSAN?

Question 48: Can a vSAN witness host appliance be deployed in the cloud?

Question 49: Can I share a witness across multiple vSAN clusters?

Question 50: For vSAN clusters using encryption services, do the hosts need or use TPM?

Question 51: For vSAN clusters, should I have a redundant Key Management Server (KMS)?

Question 52: Where should I place my Key Management Server (KMS) in my vSAN environment?

Question 53: What are my options for encryption when using vSAN?

Question 54: How do I replicate data on a vSAN cluster?

Question 55: How do I use vSAN with blade servers?

Question 56: Can I use multiple VMkernel ports with isolated A/B switches with vSAN?

Question 57: How do I reserve capacity for failures with vSAN?

Question 58: What is the capacity overhead for a vSAN stretched cluster?

Question 59: Do I need to stretch all the VMs in a vSAN stretched cluster?

Question 60: How do I configure clustered SQL and Oracle applications on vSAN?

Question 61: Can I run vSAN traffic through a network overlay, Firewall, IDS or NSX?

Question 62: Can I use consumer class SSDs with vSAN?

Question 63: Which maintenance mode should I use with vSAN?

Question 64: What are “durable components” in vSAN?

Question 65: Does vSAN use S.M.A.R.T?

Question 66: How do I protect hosts from Memory DIMM failure in a vSAN cluster?

Question 67: What should I do first after deploying a vSAN cluster?

Question 68: How do I reclaim space with TRIM/UNMAP and vSAN?

Question 69: When should I use RAID-5 or RAID-6 with vSAN?

Question 70: When should I use a “Failure to Tolerate” (FTT) of 0 with vSAN?

Question 71: When should I set a vSAN stripe storage policy rule?

Question 72: How do I share or export vSAN storage outside of the vSAN cluster?

Question 73: How can I build a vSAN cluster with the fastest possible performance?

Question 74: How large can a vSAN cluster be?

Question 75: How large should I build a vSAN cluster?

Question 76: What is the maximum size of a vSAN file share?

Question 77: How does vSAN handle “too many” failures?

Question 78: Can I manually throttle resynchronization data occurring in a vSAN cluster?

Question 79: What happens to vSAN when vCenter Server is offline, or fails?

Question 80: Can I run vCenter Server on the vSAN cluster it manages?

Question 81: How does a vSAN 2-node topology work?

Question 82: Is a vSAN stretched cluster an “active-active” topology?

Question 83: What is the maximum latency for a vSAN stretched cluster?

Question 84: How do I configure DRS with a vSAN stretched cluster?

Question 85: What is different about vSAN in VMC on AWS vs. an on-premises installation?

Question 86: How should I troubleshoot vSAN performance?

Question 87: How do I manage vSAN alarms?

Question 88: How do I use vSAN with containers and Kubernetes?

Question 89: Should I use multiple VMDKs and multiple virtual HBAs with vSAN?

Question 90: Can I run vSAN on a Raspberry Pi?

Question 91: How do I manually balance or place data components on a vSAN cluster?

Question 92: How do I re-IP hosts that comprise a vSAN cluster?

Question 93: How do I verify that a new vSAN cluster is ready for production?

Question 94: How do I configure a 2-Node cluster for direct-connect?

Question 95: Can I use Layer 3 or multiple subnets with vSAN?

Question 96: How do I backup data in a vSAN cluster?

Question 97: What is the difference between a “hybrid” and “all-flash” vSAN cluster?

Question 98: What should I know before I configure vSAN Fault Domains?

Question 99: How do I use QoS or NIOC for vSAN networking traffic?

Question 100: What does the vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) update in a vSAN cluster?