VMware vSAN on Dell EMC PowerEdge

Servers

Getting Started Guide

May 2021

Rev. A02

Notes, cautions, and warnings

NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your product.

CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data and tells you how to avoid

the problem.

Chapter 4: User-defined vSAN cluster or build your own configurations........................................ 7

Support limitations for User-defined vSAN cluster..................................................................................................... 7

vSAN firmware catalog...................................................................................................................................................... 7

Chapter 5: Getting help.................................................................................................................9

Contacting Dell EMC.......................................................................................................................................................... 9

Related information for vSAN.......................................................................................................................................... 9

Documentation resources................................................................................................................................................ 10

Contents

Contents 3

About this document

4 About this document

Introduction to VMware vSAN

VMware vSAN provides a two tier architecture consisting of a caching tier and a capacity tier. VMware provides two different

configuration options for vSAN—All-Flash and Hybrid. The All-Flash configuration uses flash devices for both the cache layer

and the capacity layer. The Hybrid configuration uses flash devices in cache layer for optimal performance and magnetic disks to

increase the capacity and persistent data storage.

You can build a vSAN cluster by using one of the following options:

● Select from the list of Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes

● Build your own based on certified components

vSAN provides various features such as storage policy-based management, encryption for data-at-rest, stretched clusters, and

checksum.

Figure 1. vSAN high-level architecture

● vSRN are classified into All Flash (AF) and Hybrid (HY) profiles

● AF contains only SSD drives (SAS/SATA/NVMe) that are required for both cache and capacity tier

● HY vSRNs use HDDs in capacity tier and SSDs in caching tier

Following are the conditions to replace the drives in vSAN:

● Dell EMC vSRNs are available in multiple profiles to meet various workload requirements. Dell EMC provides NVMe AF

● VMware and Dell EMC recommends that you use a homogenous vSAN cluster.

● When the capacity tier drive is replaced with a higher capacity drive, the overall size of vSAN increases accordingly.

6 vSAN ReadyNode (vSRN)

User-defined vSAN cluster or build your own

configurations

User-defined vSAN cluster allows you to build your own configurations. So, User-defined vSAN cluster is also called as build your

own configurations.

You can deploy vSAN by using one of the following:

● vSRN—Dell EMC predefined vSAN ReadyNodes supported by both Dell EMC and VMware.

NOTE: Before selecting the cache and capacity tiers, you must ensure that the right endurance and performance category

based drives are selected for cache tier. The VCG provides the list of drives that are compatible for cache or capacity tier

and All Flash or Hybrid profiles.

NOTE: Dell EMC recommends that you refer to the footnotes added to the Dell EMC vSAN ReadyNode configurations as

they may be applicable for user-defined vSAN clusters as well.

NOTE: For more information about best practices that must be followed before creating your own vSAN cluster, see vSAN

Design and Sizing Guide.

• Support limitations for User-defined vSAN cluster

• vSAN firmware catalog

● Dell EMC does not support the use of SED drives with hardware encryption enabled. However, SEDs are used in vSAN

● The 4Kn drives are not supported in vSAN environment.

● For VMware ESXi, Dell EMC supports various boot devices such as IDSDM-based SD cards, BOSS-S1 controllers, On board