1

VMware vSAN

Paul BrarenVMware Systems Engineer / vSAN

Northeastern US / Commercial

pbraren at vmware.com

TinkerTry.com | @paulbraren

VCP-DCV, vExpert 2014/15/16/17

Wethersfield, CT

VMware vSAN

Formerly known as Virtual SAN

Integrated into the kernel, pools disk space from multiple ESXi hosts

Modernization of the Data Center Being Fueled by HCI

Traditional 3-Tiered ArchitectureComplex and Separate Silos

Servers

and Blades

External

Storage

Networking

Hardware

Simplified management

Lower total costs

Greater agility & scale

VirtualizationCompute | Storage | Network

Unified Management

Server + Storage Network

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Built on Industry-Standard Servers and Switches

Virtualization

HCI Fills a Growing Market Gap

Flexible Enterprise Storage

HCI Storage

Traditional Storage

Reliable and Fast but complex

Cloud Storage

Simple, Flexible but lacks Enterprise control

SSD

SSD

SSD

SSD

SSD

SSD

Scale Upor

Scale Out

Storage is being Serverized

Enjoy efficient server

economics

Extend server

management to storage

Unlock affordable

server-side flash

Total Storage Market

$10B

$20B

$30B

$40B

$50B

2012 2027

TraditionalStorage

HCI

(Server SAN)

Hyperscale

Source: Wikibon Server SAN Research Project, Aug 2016

Continuing the Blistering Pace of AdoptionFastest Growth Since ESX

vSAN Customer Adoption

Q1'14 Q2'14 Q3'14 Q4'14 Q1'15 Q2'15 Q3'15 Q4'15 Q1'16 Q2'16

400

Companies in Fortune 1000 (US)

109

Countries have vSAN Presence

Industry Verticals use vSAN

100%

200% YoY bookings growth

7,000+ Customers

300,000 on-board sensors send log files

to a Big Data Analytics System running

on VMware vSAN

Analytics accelerate maintenance &

turnaround times

Each extra hour of flying time

yields $25,000 in savings

vSAN Keeps the A380 Flying

VMware vSAN: Radically Simple Storage

10

vSphere + vSAN

Resource efficient hyperconverged solution

Commodity x86 servers

Enterprise-level features:

Deduplication and Compression

Erasure Coding (RAID 5/6)

Availability, Scalability and Performance

Scales from 2 to 64 nodes

Policy-based Management

Dynamic application

Applied at the VM level

Overview

Hard disksSSD Hard disksSSD

Hard disksSSD

vSAN Datastore

Storage Designed for Business

vSAN Leverages Next-Generation Hardware

Persistence Tier

vSAN

NVMeSSD NVDIMM

vSAN

NVMe

NVDIMM

vSAN leverages next-gen hardware

Re-Platform to deliver the lowest $/Gig and $/IOPS

Caching Tier

NVMe

All Flash

High performance with consistent latency

Performance Curev

Enabling Next Generation Hardware for vSAN

12

NVDIMM

Overview

High Speed NVMe: Use high speed, low latency NVMe for

caching

NVDIMM Phase 1: Byte addressable for storing metadata

NVDIMM Phase 2: Enable storing metadata AND cache

RDMA over Ethernet: To boost n/w transfers

High Density Drives: Support more capacity per host

Benefits

Ride the technology curve to enable faster devices

Enable next-gen NVMe devices to deliver lower $/IOP

Enable storage class memory (NVDIMM) for lowest $/IOP

Reduce network latencies and improve CPU utilization with RDMA

over Ethernet

Enable high density drives for high capacity workloads at the

lowest $/Gig

13

vSAN 5.5March 2014

vSAN 6.0March 2015

All Flash

64 Node Cluster

X2 Hybrid Performance

vSAN Snapshots

vSAN Clones

Rack Awareness

vSAN 6.2March 2016

vSAN 6.1September 2015

Stretched Cluster

Replication - 5 Min RPO

Root Cause Analysis

Health Monitoring

Deduplication

Compression

Erasure Coding (RAID 5/6)

Quality of Service

Performance & Capacity Monitoring

Expanded vSAN Ready Nodes

VSA 5.0August 2011

VSA 5.5September 2013

VSA 5.5.2October 2014

VMware Storage:

A history of data integrity, data

availability & data resiliency

vSAN Continued Innovation

ESX 3.02006

ESX 4.02009

ESX 5.02011

ESX 6.02015

vSAN 6.5December 2016

iSCSI Target

2 Node Direct Connect

512e Disk Support

Cloud Automation

vSAN 6.62017

livevirtually.net/2017/01/12/correlating-vsan-versions-with-vsphere-vcenter-esxi-versions

https://livevirtually.net/2017/01/12/correlating-vsan-versions-with-vsphere-vcenter-esxi-versions/

Deduplication and Compression for Space Efficiency

Nearline deduplication and compression per disk group level.

Enabled on a cluster level

Deduplicated when de-staging from cache tier to capacity tier

Fixed block length deduplication (4KB Blocks)

Compression after deduplication

If block is compressed

vSAN and the advantage of integrationWhy integration matters

vSAN and the advantage of Integration

Why kernel integrated HCI is superior

16

Consolidate

vSphere vSAN

Managed by vCenter

VM VM VM VM VM VM

Aware of VM I/O from end to end

Kernel integration means that scheduler understands difference of I/O types

Most efficient path leads to minimal resources used to transmit to/from storage system

HCI powered by vSAN

The power of Integration

The hypervisor sits at the most important location in the data center

17

vSphere

Managed by vCenter Server

VMware SDDC Ecosystem

Storage

The power of Integration

Kernel level distributed storage brings intelligence and control to the hypervisor

18

ControlIntelligence

Managed by vCenter Server

vSphere vSAN

VMware SDDC Ecosystem

The power of Integration - Intelligence

Intelligence What you measure, how you measure it, and where you measure

it at matters

19

vSphere

Storage VM(per server)

Ad-hoc HCI

Storage

Storage

Networking

vSphere

Three-tier architecture

Measures

here

Measures

here

The power of Integration - Intelligence

Intelligence vSphere measures the right data, in the right way, at the right

location

Remember that VMware has the unique advantage understanding kernel level metrics like no other solution.

20

vSphere vSAN

Managed by vCenter

VM VM VM VM VM VM

Measures

here

HCI powered by vSAN

The advantage of Integration

vSphere with vSAN is the key to transitioning to a full SDDC

21

No risk of new solution ecosystem

No risk of new management tool

No risk of new software installation

No risk of proprietary server vendorsvSphere vSAN

Managed by vCenter

Virtual Volumes

CommonPolicy-Based Management

NSXand

SRM

VADP Data ProtectionDell EMC, Veeam, Symantec, etc.

vRealize AutomationvRealize Operations

3rd Party Ecosystem

Demo: Performance Monitoring Built In

22

vSAN shows performance from the cluster level down to the VMDK level

https://storagehub.vmware.com/#!/vmware-vsan/vmware-vsan-demonstrations/vsan-6-5-performance-service

Storage Policy-Based Management

The Old Way

Same performance and availability for every VM

Regardless of what is actually needed by each app

Monolithic data protection

Difficult maintenance

Complexity

Zoning, masking

LUN sprawl

VMs across multiple LUNs

Example: Database VM

LUN-02 RAID5

LUN-01 RAID1

Same

Datastore

Storage Policy-Based Management

Policy contains one or more rules

Availability, performance, etc.

Assign policy to VM or virtual disk

Each app gets exactly what is needed

Changes are done dynamically

No downtime, no migration

Manage traditional storage and vSAN

25

Availability

Encryption

Performance

vSAN Objects

26

VM Home

VM Swap

VMDK

Delta Disk

Memory Delta

Snapshot

VM Home Namespace (VMX, NVRAM, etc.)

VM Swap (virtual memory swap)

Virtual Disk (VMDK)

Snapshot (delta)

Snapshot (delta)

vSAN Objects and Components

Each object has multiple components, define availability and performance

Example: FTT=1, RAID-1 mirroring, Stripes=2

ESXi HostESXi HostESXi Host

Mirror Copy

stripe-2b

stripe-2a

RAID-0

Mirror Copy

stripe-1b

stripe-1a

RAID-0

VMDK Object

RAID-1

Witness

All Flash Only

With FTT=1 availability RAID-5

3+1 Layout (4 host minimum)

Recommend 5 hosts for hot rebuilds

1.33x instead of 2x overhead

20GB disk normally takes 40GB, now just ~27GB

Guaranteed 33% Space Reduction vs Mirroring

28

RAID-5

ESXi Host

parity

data

data

data

ESXi Host

data

parity

data

data

ESXi Host

data

data