VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) is integrated into the ESXi hypervisor. VSAN virtualizes and aggregates the local direct-attached disks in ESXi hosts. This creates a single pool of storage resources from the local disks with each host that is shared across all hosts in the VSAN cluster, as shown in the following diagram:
Designing VSAN for virtual machine storage
How to do it...
To use VSAN for storage in a vSphere virtual infrastructure design, follow these steps:
- Identify the hardware requirements to support VSAN
- Verify that the disks and controllers are on the VSAN Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)
- Size VSAN to support performance and availability
- Enable VSAN on the vSphere Cluster