Jase has a diverse career in technology over the past 25 years. As an IT pro, he has worked in academics, health insurance, & financials in positions ranging from administration, architecture, web development, curriculum development, to training. Before coming to VMware, he was a vSpecialist at EMC, supporting the Federal Government. He is a retired USAF MSgt, where he spent most of his military career in Communications. He is Co-Author of two virtualization books, is regularly designated as a vExpert, and is active on Twitter as @jasemccarty.

Recent Posts

Witness Consolidation

Understanding vSAN Witness Consolidation & 2 Node vSAN

posted

The vSAN Witness Appliance was introduced as a free alternative to using a physical ESXi host as a vSAN Witness Host. This appliance is only used for housing vSAN Object Witness Components, and is not allowed to run any virtual machine workloads. When deploying the vSAN Witness Appliance, there are 3 potential deployment options: Tiny, Read more...

What’s New in vSAN 6.7 Update 1

posted

VMware vSAN is the market leader in HCI. One of the many driving forces that has helped solidify this position, is the rapid and continuous pace of innovation. VMware has always given customers the power of choice, and this continues into the hybrid cloud era. VMware’s digital foundation gives customers the ability, and flexibility to Read more...
vSAN Encryption

Understanding vSAN Encryption – KMS Profile Addressing

posted

When using vSAN Encryption, one of the vSAN Health Check tests will show the health of the connection between the vSAN Hosts and the KMS Cluster as well as vCenter and the KMS Cluster. One scenario came up a few weeks ago where the vSAN Health Check indicated that the vSAN Hosts could properly communicate Read more...
traditional datastores

Understanding vSAN – Can it be used with Traditional or VVol Storage?

posted

On a call today this question came up: “Can vSAN be used with other storage?” This is a very common question, covered in the vSAN FAQ on storagehub.vmware.com, as well in other publicly facing VMware.com documentation. The answer is an absolute YES! A vSAN Cluster can also use traditional datastores and/or use VVols. Why wouldn’t this be supported? Read more...

Understanding vSAN Encryption – Booting when vCenter is Unavailable

posted

Since the introduction of vSAN Encryption in vSAN 6.6 some of the routine questions that get asked include: Do vSAN hosts get encryption key information from vCenter? What if vCenter is offline, is vSAN encryption impacted? What if vCenter is removed/replaced/not available, is vSAN impacted? The answers to these are pretty straightforward and easy to Read more...

Understanding vSAN Encryption – KMS Server Accessibility

posted

vSAN 6.6 introduced data at rest encryption as a new feature that provides another choice (in addition to VM Encryption introduced in vSphere 6.5) for customers to secure data in vSphere. Despite the fact that these technologies work a bit differently (per datastore for vSAN Encryption or per VM for VM Encryption) these technologies still Read more...

Understanding the vSAN Witness Host – Traffic Tagging

posted

With 2 Node and Stretched Cluster vSAN, a vSAN Witness Host is used. This can be a physical vSphere host or a  VMware provided virtual appliance. Using the vSAN Witness Appliance is easy, does not require any additional licensing, and has much of the configuration standardized (sizing, disks, tagged ports). A second VMkernel port (vmk1) Read more...

vSAN 6.6 Configuration Assist Makes Setup & Updating Easier

posted

Whether setting up vSAN using Easy Install, manually, or through the vSphere Web Client, once the first host is setup, there are some necessary tasks to complete the configuration. Initial tasks required include setting up a VMkernel port with vSAN traffic, claiming disks, and more. Each of these can be accomplished relatively easily at through Read more...