What you need to know about vSAN 7.0

As with my previous post, I wanted to take a moment to focus on some coming changes to vSAN 7 (something I work with on an almost daily basis).  Now, most of you are probably aware of vSAN and hopefully a good amount of you are using it for some of your workloads.  VMware has announced today it plans to bring some enhancements to bolster the offering and cement this as a product to handle the workloads of the future.

Integrated File Services

One of the early features of vSAN was to support an iSCSI connection to VMs or non-ESXi hosts, most of this being used for workloads that still needed a block based storage device.  Well now, VMware is implementing File Services into the mix.  Now, before you throw away your NAS device, this is just NFS support (Sorry CIFS users, you’ll have to wait until next time).  This support allows vSAN to be better suited for cloud native workloads and those that need a file based persistent volume to be shared with VMs.

2-node and stretched clusters

Stretched clusters are gaining popularity as an alternative way to do active-active sites and disaster recovery with a low RTO.  A couple of key enhancements are coming that will definitely help.  First, there is going to be some enhancements with DRS in the event of a failover and recovery.  If the primary site comes back online, DRS won’t move the VM back until the resync is done, thus keeping the strain down on the ISL line having to try and pull data from the other side. Second, the “replace witness” command will start immediately repairing things.  Third, and probably the most interesting feature.  In the event that you run out of space in the secondary site, the system will allow the VM to keep running on the primary (with an alert) and will resync once space is added.

Management

VMware has also gone ahead and improved the reporting and management features of vSAN.  VM capacity reporting is now consistent across both the UI as well as APIs.  This will also take into account things like thin provisioning, swap and namespace objects as well.  You can also easily view how much memory consumption is being taken by VSAN (especially important for those of you with low memory hosts).  It is also easy to see objects created by vSphere Replication.

Hardware and Usage Enhancements

Lastly, let’s take a moment here to talk about some speeds/feeds related enhancements.  vSAN now supports 32TB drives (if ever one would exist in a cost effective version), but this also increases the max storage to 1PB in logical capacity.  One of the biggest new enhancements that is coming with vSAN 7 and vSphere 7 is that NVMe gains hot plug support.  What this means is it’s no longer a requirement to shut down the host to replace an NVMe drive (something I’ve been waiting over a year for since we starting going mainstream with NVMe drives in VxRail).

The last big change is actually for a very specific workload.  Those that are sharing a disk between VMs (Oracle RAC) no longer have to have that disk thick provisioned.  One thing that wasn’t shared with me, but may come up later is about the cache size.  In vSAN 6, the cache size is limited to 600GB (even if the disk is larger).  I’ve heard nothing on if this changes, but will update this post if it does at launch.

VxRail – One Year Later

vxrail.frontOne year ago, EMC (yes it was still EMC at the time) launched their update to the VSPEX BLUE, EMC’s take on the EVO: Rail product.  For those who don’t remember, EVO: Rail was a joint effort between VMware and several hardware vendors to release hyper converged infrastructure to the masses.  I covered the original launch here and EMC’s spin on it.  The EVO: Rail program was a success / failure depending on who you spoke to in the industry, but it did validate that HCI is here to stay and not just a passing fad.  Later on, the EVO program was retooled under a joint venture between EMC & VMware under the VCE umbrella , and last year launched the evolution of that product … VxRail!

What went well?

What's Going Well

VxRail went GA in March of 2016 and so far sales have good, especially in the mid market, especially on purpose built deployments (VDI, Databases, etc…).  Working for a partner, I can attest that HCI adoption is going strong in the market place as more and more people look to it as a possible future.  The product has undergone several major releases, which is huge for a product that was just starting to sell.  It means that they are really listening to feedback and delivering to enhance the product regularly.  It helps that VMware has been continuously driving innovation on the VSAN side (which VxRail is built on).

What needs improvement?

What's not going well

Dell EMC will be the first to admit that they didn’t expect the sales of this product (especially given the sales of the previous generation), and thus they didn’t quite bulk up the PS side to match.  Unfortunately that mean delays while the back log was churned through.  The other side was features was prioritized over serviceability, so things like the support gateway were not built in when you would have expected it was already included.  The good news is things like this have been addressed (or are being addressed soon).

So what’s next for VxRail?

VxRail 4.0

Flash Flash Flash!  Recent sales have been leaning very heavily to all flash solutions, and that will be the trend going forward with VxRail sales which will also drive development on those lines especially in NVMe and NVDIMMs.  The shift in the recent version to use Dell PowerEdge Servers has also opened up a lot of configuration options for memory and CPU.

Multiple Node Options

With offering several different types of nodes, you can right size the product for the solution and make the price a lot more attractive (this is one of the things learned from the EVO sales).

Sean’s Take

Its great to see things are finally shaping up for the EVO program and just further validates something I’ve believed for years.  Speaking as a partner, I welcome the extra options in HCI market space because it gives the customer a better chance to get what they want, and that will greatly help more people consider HCI an option for their next step in the data center journey.  It was great to speak with Chad Dunn at Tech Field Day 13 (#TFD13) earlier this month in Austin.  If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the videos from Dell EMC.