Essential Virtual SAN

Book excerpt: Understand and implement VMware Virtual SAN: the heart of tomorrow's Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) VMware's breakthrough Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) initiative can help you virtualize your entire datacenter: compute, storage, networks, and associated services. Central to SDDC is VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN): a fully distributed storage architecture seamlessly integrated into the hypervisor and capable of scaling to meet any enterprise storage requirement. Now, the leaders of VMware's wildly popular Virtual SAN previews have written the first authoritative guide to this pivotal technology. You'll learn what Virtual SAN is, exactly what it offers, how to implement it, and how to maximize its value. Writing for administrators, consultants, and architects, Cormac Hogan and Duncan Epping show how Virtual SAN implements both object-based storage and a policy platform that simplifies VM storage placement. You'll learn how Virtual SAN and vSphere work together to dramatically improve resiliency, scale-out storage functionality, and control over QoS. Both an up-to-the-minute reference and hands-on tutorial, Essential Virtual SAN uses realistic examples to demonstrate Virtual SAN's most powerful capabilities. You'll learn how to plan, architect, and deploy Virtual SAN successfully, avoid gotchas, and troubleshoot problems once you're up and running. Coverage includes Understanding the key goals and concepts of Software-Defined Storage and Virtual SAN technology Meeting physical and virtual requirements for safe Virtual SAN implementation Installing and configuring Virtual SAN for your unique environment Using Storage Policy Based Management to control availability, performance, and reliability Simplifying deployment with VM Storage Policies Discovering key Virtual SAN architectural details: caching I/O, VASA, witnesses, pass-through RAID, and more Ensuring efficient day-to-day Virtual SAN management and maintenance Interoperating with other VMware features and products Designing and sizing Virtual SAN clusters Troubleshooting, monitoring, and performance optimization