Foreword by Christos Karamanolis xvii About the Author xix About the Technical Reviewers xxi Acknowledgments xxiii We Want to Hear from You! xxv 1 Introduction to VSAN 1 Software-Defined Datacenter 1 Software-Defined Storage 2 Hyper-Convergence/Server SAN Solutions 3 Introducing Virtual SAN 4 What Is Virtual SAN? 6 What Does VSAN Look Like to an Administrator? 9 Summary 12 2 VSAN Prerequisites and Requirements for Deployment 13 VMware vSphere 13 ESXi 14 Cache and Capacity Devices 14 ESXi Boot Considerations 15 VSAN Requirements 15 VMware Hardware Compatibility Guide 16 VSAN Ready Nodes 16 Storage Controllers 17 Capacity Tier Devices 19 Cache Tier Devices 21 Network Requirements 22 Network Interface Cards 22 Supported Virtual Switch Types 22 Layer 2 or Layer 3 23 VMkernel Network 23 VSAN Network Traffic 24 Jumbo Frames 24 NIC Teaming 25 Network I/O Control 25 VSAN Stretched Cluster 25 VSAN 2-Node Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO) 26 Firewall Ports 26 Summary 26 3 VSAN Installation and Configuration 29 VSAN Networking 29 VMkernel Network for VSAN 30 VSAN Network Configuration: VMware Standard Switch 31 VSAN Network Configuration: vSphere Distributed Switch 32 Step 1: Create the Distributed Switch 32 Step 2: Create a Distributed Port Group 33 Step 3: Build VMkernel Ports 34 Possible Network Configuration Issues 38 Network I/O Control Configuration Example 40 Design Considerations: Distributed Switch and Network I/O Control 42 Scenario 1: Redundant 10 GbE Switch Without "Link Aggregation" Capability 43 Scenario 2: Redundant 10 GbE Switch with Link Aggregation Capability 45 Creating a VSAN Cluster 48 vSphere HA 49 vSphere HA Communication Network 49 vSphere HA Heartbeat Datastores 50 vSphere HA Admission Control 50 vSphere HA Isolation Response 51 vSphere HA Component Protection 51 The Role of Disk Groups 51 Disk Group Maximums 52 Why Configure Multiple Disk Groups in VSAN? 52 Cache Device to Capacity Device Sizing Ratio 53 Automatically Add Disks to VSAN Disk Groups 54 Manually Adding Disks to a VSAN Disk Group 55 Disk Group Creation Example 55 VSAN Datastore Properties 58 Summary 59 4 VM Storage Policies on VSAN 61 Introducing Storage Policy-Based Management in a VSAN Environment 62 Number of Failures to Tolerate 65 Failure Tolerance Method 66 Number of Disk Stripes Per Object 69 IOPS Limit for Object 70 Flash Read Cache Reservation 71 Object Space Reservation 71 Force Provisioning 71 Disable Object Checksum 73 VASA Vendor Provider 73 An Introduction to VASA 73 Storage Providers 74 VSAN Storage Providers: Highly Available 75 Changing VM Storage Policy On-the-Fly 75 Objects, Components, and Witnesses 80 VM Storage Policies 80 Enabling VM Storage Policies 81 Creating VM Storage Policies 81 Assigning a VM Storage Policy During VM Provisioning 81 Summary 82 5 Architectural Details 83 Distributed RAID 83 Objects and Components 86 Component Limits 87 Virtual Machine Storage Objects 88 Namespace 89 Virtual Machine Swap 90 VMDKs and Deltas 90 Witnesses and Replicas 90 Object Layout 91 VSAN Software Components 94 Component Management 95 Data Paths for Objects 95 Object Ownership 96 Placement and Migration for Objects 96 Cluster Monitoring, Membership, and Directory Services 97 Host Roles (Master, Slave, Agent) 97 Reliable Datagram Transport 98 On-Disk Formats 98 Cache Devices 99 Capacity Devices 99 VSAN I/O Flow 100 Caching Algorithms 100 &nb.