This module focuses on managing vSAN in a VxRail appliance.

vSAN configuration, storage policy

creation, vSAN monitoring, and vSAN availability considerations are discussed.

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 1

 This lesson presents the configuration of vSAN features relevant to VxRail. vSAN features which are not
relevant/recommended in a VxRail appliance are also highlighted.

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 2

 The VxRail vSAN cluster is automatically configured during the initial setup of VxRail. To view the vSAN
configuration select the VxRail cluster in the navigation panel, select the Configure tab, and then select
General under vSAN. We see that vSAN is turned on. The Add disks to storage field is set to Manual for
VxRail vSAN clusters. Disk claiming is set to manual because VxRail Manager handles the addition of
new disks to existing nodes.

Deduplication and compression can be enabled for all flash VxRail systems, disabled by default.
vSAN data-at-rest encryption is disabled by default. Encryption requires an external vCenter Server and
an external key management system. Integrates with all KMIP-compliant key management technologies.

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 3

 Deduplication and compression are only supported on all flash VxRail systems. vSAN deduplication and
compression occur inline when data is destaged from the cache to the capacity disks. Data is first
deduplicated by removing redundant copies of blocks that contain the exact same data. The deduplication
algorithm is applied at the disk-group level and results in a single copy of each unique 4 KB block per disk
group. Duplicated data blocks may exist across multiple disk groups. Limiting the deduplication domain to
a disk group, eliminates the need for a global lookup table, and minimizes network overhead and CPU
utilization. Deduplication metadata consumes 3–5% of usable capacity.

LZ4 compression is applied after the blocks are deduplicated and before being written to SSD. If the
compression results in a block size of 2 KB or less, the compressed version of the block is persistently
saved on SSD. If the compression does not result in a block size of less than 2 KB, the full 4 KB block is
written to SSD.

Almost all workloads benefit some from deduplication. However typical virtual-server workloads with highly
redundant data such as full-clone virtual desktops or homogenous-server operating systems benefit most.
Compression provides further data reduction. Text, bitmap, and program files are very compressible, and
2:1 is often possible. Other data types that are already compressed, such as certain graphics formats and
video files or encrypted files, may yield little or no reduction.

Deduplication and compression are enabled together at the cluster level. The process reformats the disk
groups. vSAN evacuates data from an existing disk group, removes, and recreates it with a new format.
Enabling deduplication and compression at initial setup is recommended to avoid the overhead and
potential performance impact of having to deduplicate and compress existing data.

To enable deduplication and compression, click the Edit button in the vSAN General window. Check the
Deduplication and Compression box, optionally check the Allow Reduced Redundancy box and then Click
OK. The Allow Reduced Redundancy box can be used during the enable process on a vSAN with limited
resources. For example, a three node cluster with FTT set to 1 does not have the resources to evacuate
data for the disk group reformat. The allow reduced redundancy option keeps the VMs running, but the
VMs might be unable to tolerate the defined failure level. Temporarily during the format change, the VMs
might be at risk of data loss. vSAN restores full compliance after the format conversion is complete.

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 4

 vSAN data-at-rest encryption is a datastore, or cluster-wide, level setting applied to all VM components in
the cluster. This feature is used to solve the concern of media theft. The data is encrypted both at the
caching and capacity tiers. During data destage from the cache to capacity tier, data is unencrypted,
deduplicated, compressed, encrypted, and then written to the capacity tier. Encrypting the data after
deduplication and compression provides space savings.

vSAN encryption requires a Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) compliant Key
Management System (KMS). Per storagehub.vmware.com nearly all KMIP-compliant KMS vendors are
compatible, with specific testing completed for vendors such as HyTrust®, Gemalto®, Thales e-Security®,
CloudLink®, and Vormetric®.

VxRail deployments currently require an external vCenter Server to enable and use vSAN encryption. To
enable vSAN encryption, click the Edit button in the vSAN General window. Check the Encryption box,
optionally check the Erase disks before use box and specify the KMS cluster. Click OK to enable
encryption. When enabling encryption, vSAN performs a rolling reformat of every disk group in the cluster.
The best practice is to enable encryption on the vSAN datastore after VxRail first build.

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 5

 vSphere encryption enables data encryption on a per VM level. This level of encryption is ideal for
customers who are concerned about rogue administrators sending a VM and all its data to a nonsecure
location. Which VMs should be encrypted, is up to the virtualization administrative team and can be
selected on a per VM basis. vSphere encryption encrypts data in-flight. Requires a KMIP-compliant KMS.
vSphere encryption is enforced through VM storage policies. Little or no space savings for encrypted data
blocks with deduplication and compression enabled at vSAN level.

vSAN encryption is data-at-rest encryption for the whole vSAN datastore. Supports deduplication and
compression, thus providing space savings benefits compared to vSphere encryption.

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 The vSAN health service is turned on by default, and a periodic health check is run every hour. The
periodic health check can be turned off or on, and the interval can be changed. The vSAN health service
includes preconfigured health check tests to monitor, troubleshoot, diagnose the cause of cluster
component problems, and identify any potential risk.

The vSAN performance service includes statistical charts used to monitor IOPS, throughput, latency, and
congestion. The performance service is disabled by default. Turn on the vSAN performance service to
monitor the performance of a vSAN cluster, host, disk group, disk, and VMs. The vSAN performance
service stores the statistical data in a Stats database object in the vSAN datastore. The Stats database
requires a storage policy.

To manage vSAN health and performance services, select the VxRail cluster, select the Configure tab,
select vSAN, and then select Health and Performance. To change the health check time interval or to turn
off/on the periodic health check, click the health service Edit settings button.

To turn on the performance service, click the performance service Edit settings button. The vSAN default
storage policy is adequate for the Stats database. Make sure that the vSAN cluster is properly configured
and has no unresolved health problems before the performance service is turned on.

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 VxRail Manager is used for vSAN disk management in a VxRail Appliance. The VxRail first build
configures the vSAN cluster, disk groups, and the vSAN datastore. VxRail Manager also manages the
addition of new disks. Do not use the vSphere Web Client to make any VxRail vSAN disk changes.

vSAN 6.6 introduced the Configuration Assist and Updates features.

• Configuration Assist helps verify the configuration of cluster components and troubleshoot
problems. The Configuration Assist checks hardware compatibility, network, and vSAN configuration
options.
• The Updates feature is used to update storage controller firmware and drivers. In a VxRail
environment VxRail Manager is the sole and primary source for vSAN cluster compatibility, and
version control.

Do not use the vSAN configuration assist and updates features to modify the VxRail vSAN configuration.

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 8

 This lesson presents vSAN storage policy rules and the creation of vSAN storage policies.

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 9

 A storage provider is a software component that is offered by VMware or developed by a third party
through vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA). The storage provider can also be called VASA
provider. The storage providers integrate with various storage entities that include external physical
storage and storage abstractions, such as vSAN and Virtual Volumes. vCenter Server and ESXi
communicate with the storage provider to obtain information about the underlying physical and software-
defined storage. vCenter Server can then display the storage data in the vSphere Web Client.

The VxRail vSAN cluster is automatically configured during the initial setup of VxRail. Enabling vSAN
automatically configures and registers a vSAN storage provider for each host in the cluster. The vSAN
storage providers report a set of underlying storage capabilities to vCenter Server. They also
communicate with the vSAN layer to report the storage requirements of the virtual machines.

To view storage providers in the vSphere Web Client, select the vCenter server under hosts and clusters.
Then select the Configure tab and select Storage Providers. The storage providers for vSAN appear on
the list. Each host has a vSAN storage provider, but only one storage provider is active. Storage providers
that belong to other hosts are in standby. If the host that currently has the active storage provider fails, the
storage provider for another host becomes active.

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 As discussed in the vSAN overview lesson in an earlier module, FTT, and FTM settings in a storage policy
govern the vSAN fault tolerance behavior.

FTT is the number of failures the cluster should be designed to tolerate before data loss occurs. FTT=1,
and FTM = RAID-1 are the default settings. FTM is the failure tolerance method, either RAID-1 (Mirroring)
or RAID-5/6 (Erasure Coding). Mirroring can accommodate an FTT setting of 1–3. If FTM is set to
mirroring, then for N failures tolerated, N+1 copies of the object are created. Mirroring requires witness
components, the number of witnesses is equal to the FTT setting. Hence 2N+1 hosts contributing storage
are required. The witness components serve as tiebreakers when availability decisions are made in the
vSAN cluster. Erasure coding can only accommodate FTT=1 (RAID-5) or FTT=2 (RAID-6). Erasure
coding does not require a witness disk stripe per object.

Object space reservation is the percentage of the logical sized of the virtual machine disk object that must
be reserved when deploying virtual machines. The default is 0% – thin provisioned. A setting of 100% fully
provisions storage for the VM. Set the value to 0 or 100 if using RAID-5/6 with deduplication and
compression.

Number of disk stripes per object – default value is 1 – minimum number of drives across which each
replica of an object is striped. The recommendation is to leave the value at 1.

Other vSAN storage policy rules are available. Refer to the Administering VMware vSAN manual for a
complete listing of rules and descriptions.

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 To view and manage VM storage policies, navigate to the VM Storage Policies page in the vSphere Web
Client. Home > Policies and Profiles > VM Storage Profiles.

The initial setup of VxRail creates two VxRail vSAN storage policies in addition to the default vSAN
storage policy as shown in the graphic. Do not delete the VxRail vSAN storage policies.

The VxRail system VMs use VXRAIL-SYSTEM-STORAGE-PROFILE which guarantees 100% object
space reservation with FTT set to 1. Thus in effect the VxRail system VMs have RAID-1 protection with
guaranteed storage.

VXRAIL-STORAGE-PROFILE has number of failures to tolerate set to 1, this policy is available for use by
any VMs deployed on the VxRail cluster. This policy is equivalent to the default vSAN storage policy.

The two VxRail policies and the default vSAN policy tolerate only one failure with RAID-1 fault tolerance.
Customers with all flash VxRail systems may want to use RAID-5/6 erasure coding. Other customers may
have mission critical applications requiring tolerance of two failures with RAID-1 mirroring. One can create
storage policies to match the required tolerance levels. The vSAN cluster should have the minimum
number of nodes to be compatible. We discuss the creation of a new storage policy next.

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 In this example we create a policy with FTT set to 1, and FTM set to RAID-5/6. Equivalent of RAID-5. An
all Flash vSAN cluster with a minimum of four nodes supports the requirement.

To create a VM storage policy, click Create VM Storage Policy. Select the vCenter Server, give the policy
a name, and optionally enter a description. Click Next.

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 In the Rule-Set page of the Create New VM Storage Policy wizard, set the storage type to VSAN and then
specify the desired rules. To add new rules, use the Add rule pulldown and select the desired rules.

In this example two rules have been defined for the vSAN storage policy:
• Primary level of failures to tolerate – 1
Failure tolerance method – RAID 5/6 (Erasure Coding)
• This combination of FTT and FTM is equivalent to RAID-5. A 100 GB virtual disk would consume
133.33 GB of storage space.
• Click Next.

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 The Storage compatibility section of the Create New VM Storage Policy wizard lists the datastores
compatible with the defined rules. In this example, there are no compatible datastores listed. The VxRail
appliance in this example is a hybrid system and does not support RAID-5/6.

Click Finish. The new policy is listed in the VM Storage Policies view. Even though the policy was created,
in this specific example the RAID-5 policy cannot be used.

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 In this example we create a policy with FTT set to 2, and FTM set to RAID-1. A vSAN cluster with a
minimum of five nodes supports the requirement. This VxRail cluster has five nodes.
• Two rules have been defined for the vSAN storage policy:
• Primary level of failures to tolerate – 2
Failure tolerance method – RAID-1
• A 100 GB virtual disk would consume 300 GB of storage space.
• Click Next.

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 The VxRail vSAN datastore is listed as a compatible datastore. RAID-1 with FTT of 2 requires five nodes.
The VxRail vSAN cluster in this example has five nodes.

Click Finish. The new policy is listed in the VM Storage Policies view. The new policy can be used as
needed – when deploying new VMs or on existing VMs.

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 To monitor a vSAN storage policy, select the policy in the VM Storage Policies view, then select the
Monitor tab. One can view information on VMs and Virtual Disks, and Storage Compatibility.

The example shows the VxRail vSAN storage policy that is applied to all the VxRail system VMs. In the
VMs and Virtual Disks tab all the VMs and virtual disks that the policy applies to are listed. The
compliance status is also listed. The Storage Compatibility tab lists the compatible vSAN datastores. The
VxRail vSAN datastore is shown as a compatible datastore in this example.

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 18

 This lesson presents monitoring all aspects of a VxRail vSAN cluster. Monitoring of health, capacity,
virtual objects, physical disks, and performance are presented.

Copyright © 2017 Dell Inc. VxRail Appliance Administration and Management 19

 To monitor the health of a vSAN cluster, select the VxRail cluster in the navigation panel, select the
Monitor tab, select vSAN, and then select Health. vSAN health check runs periodically and can also be run
on demand by clicking the Retest button.

You can use vSAN health checks to monitor the status of cluster components, diagnose issues, and
troubleshoot problems. The health checks present hardware compatibility, network configuration and
operation, advanced vSAN configuration options, storage device health, and virtual machine objects. The
vSAN health checks are divided into categories. Each category contains individual health checks. Drill into
each category to see the individual tests.

VMware Update Manager (VUM) is fully integrated into the VMware vCenter Server Appliance, however
VUM should never be used for updates in a VxRail cluster. VxRail Manager should be used for all
updates.

Customers may choose to participate in the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program to
enable vSAN online health checks. Online health checks can monitor the vSAN cluster health and send to
the data to VMware’s analytics backend system for advanced analysis.

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 Each category contains individual health checks. Drill into each category to see the individual tests. In the
screenshot above, the Hardware compatibility category is expanded revealing subitems related to this
category. Selecting an item from this expanded list displays details below. In this example, there is a
warning related to Host issues retrieving hardware info. The details seem to indicate a timeout when
querying HCL info. Click the Ask VMware button to open the relevant knowledge base article. The KB
article in this example (2149290) describes the health check and provides information on issue resolution.

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 To monitor the vSAN disk balance, expand Cluster in the vSAN health check report and select vSAN Disk
Balance. The Proactive Rebalance Disks button is available if the disks are out of balance. By default,
vSAN automatically rebalances the vSAN cluster when a capacity device reaches 80 percent utilization.
Rebalancing is also automatically initiated under certain circumstances. e.g. vSAN detects a hardware
failure, or a vSAN host is placed in maintenance mode with evacuate all data option.

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 To monitor the capacity of a vSAN cluster, select Capacity in the Monitor vSAN page. One can monitor the
capacity of the vSAN datastore, deduplication and compression efficiency, and a breakdown of capacity
usage.

The Capacity Overview displays the storage capacity of the vSAN datastore, including used space, free
space, and vSAN overhead.

The Used Capacity Breakdown displays the percentage of capacity used by different object types or data
types. Object types – lists information about various objects – virtual disks, VM home objects, swap
objects, and so on. Object types also include file system overhead and checksum overhead. Data types –
displays the percentage of capacity used by primary VM data, vSAN overhead, and temporary overhead.

On all flash systems with deduplication and compression enabled, the Deduplication and Compression
Overview displays the space savings data.

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 To monitor vSAN virtual objects, select Virtual Objects in the Monitor vSAN page. The view lists all virtual
machines and the corresponding virtual objects in the vSAN cluster. The view also shows the VM storage
policy compliance status of the vSAN objects.

Expand a VM, then select an object like one of the virtual disks and click the Physical Disk Placement tab.
The physical disk placement tab shows device information, such as name, identifier or UUID, and so on.
The distribution of the vSAN components is also shown. The example on the screen shows the physical
disk placement for Hard Disk 1 on the VxRail Manager VM. We see the placement of the witness and two
data components.

The Compliance Failures tab displays the VM storage policy compliance failures associated with a specific
object.

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 To monitor vSAN physical disks, select Physical Disks in the Monitor vSAN page. The view displays all
hosts, cache disks, and capacity disks in the cluster.

Expand each host to see the listing of vSAN disks. For each disk, the view displays the total capacity,
used capacity, reserved capacity, functional status, and disk group information. Selecting a specific
capacity disk displays the vSAN objects stored on that disk.

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 To monitor vSAN resynching activity, select Resynching Components in the Monitor vSAN page.

When a hardware device, host, or network fails, or if a host is placed into maintenance mode, vSAN
initiates resynchronization in the vSAN cluster. The view shows the number of vSAN components
currently being synchronized. The bytes left to resynchronize, and the time estimated remaining for the
objects to comply with the assigned storage policy are also shown.

The Resynch Throttling button allows one to reduce the bandwidth used to perform resynchronization on
disk groups in the vSAN cluster. Resynchronization throttling is a cluster-wide setting, and it is applied on
a per disk group basis. Consider resynchronization throttling only if latencies are rising in the cluster due
to resynchronization, or if resynchronization traffic is too high on a host. Resynchronization throttling can
increase the time required to complete resynchronization. Reprotection of noncompliant VMs might be
delayed.

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 You can use the vSAN cluster performance charts to monitor the workload of the vSAN cluster and
determine the root cause of problems. The vSAN performance service should be turned on. Select the
VxRail cluster in the navigation panel, select the Monitor tab, and then select Performance.

To view the VM consumption charts, select vSAN – Virtual Machine Consumption. vSAN displays
performance charts for clients running on the cluster, including IOPS, throughput, latency, congestions,
and outstanding IO. The statistics on these charts are aggregated from the hosts within the cluster.

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 To view the vSAN cluster backend performance statistics, select vSAN – Backend. vSAN displays
performance charts for the cluster back-end operations, including IOPS, throughput, latency, congestions,
and outstanding I/Os. The statistics on these charts are aggregated from the hosts within the cluster.

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 vSAN performance charts are also available at the host level. Select a host within the VxRail cluster in the
navigation panel, select the Monitor tab, and then select Performance.

At the host level, you can view detailed statistical charts for virtual machine consumption and the vSAN
back end, including IOPS, throughput, latency, and congestion. One can also view statistical charts for
disk groups, disks, physical adapters, and VMkernel adapters.

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 vSAN performance charts are also available at the VM level. Select a VM hosted on the VxRail cluster in
the navigation panel, select the Monitor tab, and then select Performance.

vSAN displays performance charts for the VM, including IOPS, throughput, and latency. Performance
charts for virtual disks include IOPS, delayed normalized IOPS, virtual SCSI IOPS, virtual SCSI
throughput, and virtual SCSI latency.

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 You can use the default vSAN alarms to monitor the cluster, hosts, and existing vSAN licenses. Select the
VxRail cluster in the navigation panel, select the Monitor tab, and then select Issues. To view the default
alarm definitions, select Alarm Definitions. To view vSAN related alarm definitions, filter the list by “vSAN”.

The default alarms are automatically triggered when relevant events are activated or if conditions specified
in the alarms are met. To view the triggered alarms, select Triggered Alarms.

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 This lesson presents vSAN availability considerations – Fault domains and maintenance mode.

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 Assume that a vSAN cluster spans multiple racks or blade server chassis. To ensure protection against
rack or chassis failure, one can create fault domains. A fault domain consists of one or more vSAN hosts
grouped according to their physical location in the data center. Fault domains enable vSAN to tolerate
failures of entire physical racks, a single host, capacity device, network link, or a network switch dedicated
to a fault domain.

The number of failures to tolerate (FTT) policy for the cluster depends on the number of failures a virtual
machine is provisioned to tolerate. For example, a virtual machine is configured with FTT = 1 and using
fault domains. vSAN can tolerate a single failure of any kind and of any component in a fault domain,
including the failure of the rack. Fault domains ensure that protection objects, such as replicas and
witnesses, are placed in different fault domains.

A minimum of three fault domains are required. For best results, configure four or more fault domains in
the cluster. A cluster with three fault domains has the same restrictions as a three host cluster.

The vSAN cluster in the graphic consists of eight nodes esxi-01 through esxi-08. Four fault domains FD1,
FD2, FD3, FD4 have been defined. Each fault domain has two nodes. The storage policy has FTT set to
1, and FTM set to RAID-1. The vSAN components are spread over three fault domains.

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 The tables show the minimum number of fault domains required for various FTT/FTM combinations.

Provide enough fault domains to satisfy the number of failures to tolerate. If possible, dedicate one fault
domain of free capacity for rebuilding data after a failure. Three fault domains do not support certain data
evacuation modes, and vSAN is unable to reprotect data after a failure.

Assign the same number of nodes to each fault domain. Use hosts that have uniform configuration.

If fault domains are enabled, vSAN applies the active virtual machine storage policy to the fault domains
instead of the individual hosts. If a host is not a member of a fault domain, vSAN interprets it as a stand-
alone fault domain.

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 To manage vSAN fault domains, select the VxRail cluster in the navigation panel, select the Configure tab,
select vSAN, and then select Fault Domains & Stretched Cluster. The VxRail initial setup does not create
any explicit fault domains. As a consequence each node behaves as a fault domain.

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 To create vSAN fault domains, click the green plus icon in the Fault Domains section. Specify a name and
add hosts to the fault domain. This VxRail appliance only has four nodes, in the same rack, so there is no
benefit to the creation of fault domains. At best, we would have one node for each of the four fault
domains.

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 VxRail vSAN cluster nodes may have to be placed into maintenance mode for remedial operations. The
vSAN cluster capacity automatically reduces when a host enters maintenance mode, as the host no longer
contributes storage to the cluster. The storage resources for a VM might be located anywhere in the
cluster. VMs on the node are typically moved to another node with vMotion, however the node could be
providing storage to VMs which are on another node.

A vSAN data migration option must be specified when placing a host into maintenance mode.
• Evacuate all data to other hosts – vSAN evacuates all data to the other hosts in the cluster,
maintains, or fixes availability compliance for affected components. Sufficient resources must exist
on the other hosts. This option is typically used when removing a node permanently. This option
results in the largest amount of data transfer and consumes the most time and resources.
• Ensure data accessibility from other hosts – The default option. vSAN only migrates the
components that are essential for running the VMs. The availability of VMs is affected if there is a
failure. The ensure data accessibility option does not reprotect data during failure and one might
experience unexpected data loss. Typically used when taking a host out of the cluster temporarily.
• No data evacuation – vSAN does not evacuate any data from the host. Typically used when shutting
down the entire cluster.

Keep the following considerations in mind when placing a host into maintenance mode:
Number of hosts needed in the cluster to meet the FTT requirement.
Number of capacity drives left on the remaining hosts to handle the stripe width policy requirement.
Is there enough capacity on the remaining hosts to handle the amount of data that must be migrated?
Is there enough flash cache capacity on the remaining hosts to handle any flash read cache reservations?

To place a host in maintenance mode, right click on the host, select Maintenance Mode, and then select
Enter Maintenance Mode. A confirmation dialog opens. We discuss the confirmation dialog next.

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 vSAN does a capacity precheck before allowing a host to enter maintenance mode. The maintenance
mode confirmation dialog lists the impact of each data evacuation option.

Evacuate all data to other objects – Shows if sufficient capacity is available on the other hosts and the
amount to data to be moved.

Ensure data accessibility from other hosts and No data evacuation both show the number of objects that
become noncompliant.

Click the See full results link, for the full list of noncompliant objects. Close the precheck window. Click OK
to place the host into maintenance mode.

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 The purpose of this lab is to use the vSphere Web Client to monitor the health and performance of a
VxRail vSAN cluster.

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 The purpose of this lab is to understand the implications of using fault domains and different FTT and FTM
settings in the storage policy.

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 The purpose of this lab is to use the vSphere Web Client to manage vSAN storage policies.

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 This module presented vSAN management in a VxRail appliance. vSAN configuration, storage policy
creation, vSAN monitoring, and vSAN availability considerations were discussed.

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