VMware Virtual SAN 6 – Setup and Configuration [Part 2]

In this post I will go through enabling and configuring VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) 6 cluster within vSphere. Virtual SAN is embedded directly in the hypervisor and does not require any additional software to be installed.

vBoring VSAN Series:

Configure VMkernel for VMware VSAN 6:

First let’s setup a VMkernel so VSAN can talk to the other hosts in the VSAN cluster. In a testing/lab environment it can piggy back off your Management VMkernel adapter but in my case I am going to dedicate a uplink for VSAN traffic.

I created a port group on my distributed switch.

1 VSAN - Create VSAN port group

I gave the port group it’s own dedicated uplink for VSAN.

Next I created the VMkernel for VSAN. Go to Hosts and Clusters, click on a host, go to the Manage tab, Networking, Virtual Switches or VMkernel adapters page (the button you need is on them both), then click on Add Host Networking.

Select VMkernel Network Adapter, click Next:

If you created a port group you can select it now. If you are using a standard switch use the second option. Click Next:

Leave the TCP/IP stack on Default, make sure you check the box beside Virtual SAN traffic. Click Next:

Assigned a IP address to the VMkernel. Click Next:

Ready to Complete! Ensure Virtual SAN traffic says Enabled and a IP address is assigned. Click Finish:

Enable VSAN on the Cluster:

Now we have our disks setup (Part 1), and a VMkernel created for virtual SAN traffic we are ready to enable VSAN on the cluster! VSAN options are only accessible via the web client and will not find them on the thick client.

Before VSAN can be enabled, High Availability (HA) needs to be disabled on the cluster. Click on the cluster, go to Manage, Settings, vSphere HA, then click Edit to turn it off.

Now we are finally ready to enable VSAN. Click on General, then Edit:

Put a check in the Turn ON Virtual SAN. You have a choice for Add disks to storage. In Manual Mode you have to manually add disks into VSAN. With Automatic it will grab any available disks and use them. I like Manual Mode so you can pick the disks. Once you make your choice click Ok.

Once the tasks completed go back to the General page. It should say Virtual SAN is Turned ON and the Network status as Normal.

Now that Virtual SAN is turned on we are ready to create a Disk Group! Click on Disk Management, then the Claim Disks button.

This screen will let us pick the disks on each host that will make up our first Disk Group. A Disk Group is basically a logical container that groups your SSD cache to your HDDs. If you want to read more check out Duncan Epping post about multiple Disk Groups.

For each host select at least 1 Flash disk and the HDD that will contribute storage. Click Ok:

Once the task finishes you will see each host now has a Disk group. When you select a disk group it will show what disks are assigned.

If you go to the General page you will see the total capacity of the VSAN with the current disk groups. Adding more disks or another disk group will expand the total capacity.

VSAN will present a new datastore called vsanDatastore.

You can now go and re enabled High Availability (HA) on your cluster.

Note: VSAN will only present a single datastore no matter how many disk groups you add. I would love to see the ability to create multiple datastores in a single VSAN cluster. For example I have 10k SAS drives for my Tier 1 datastore and my 7200K SATA drives for Tier 2 (backups and such). Though in a production environment you probably wouldn’t have tiered storage but would be nice if that ability was there!