vCloud Foundation 5.2 - vSAN Day 2 Operations

vCloud Foundation 5.2 - vSAN Day 2 Operations

• vSAN is a software-defined storage solution integrated into VMware vSphere, enabling highly available, high-performance storage for virtual machines, leveraging compute nodes for storage. It differs from traditional SANs, utilizing commodity hardware.
• vSAN storage is deployed within vSAN clusters, requiring one or more ESXi hosts.
• Virtual machines access vSAN storage through vSAN datastores.
• vSAN is designed for high performance, enabling low latency for virtual machines.
• Monitoring tools within vCenter are crucial for tracking vSAN cluster health and identifying potential issues, including capacity, performance, and availability.
• Troubleshooting issues involves reviewing relevant logs and monitoring metrics, focusing on IOPS, latency, disk space, and performance bottlenecks.
• Effective capacity management involves proactively monitoring utilization to prevent issues and utilize resources efficiently, considering free space, available capacity, and appropriate storage provisioning for deployed VMs. Understanding vSAN capacity units is vital to anticipate expansion.
• Regular maintenance tasks, such as defragmentation, data integrity checks, and ensuring proper host operating system updates, prevent or address potential problems.
• Adding or removing hosts from a vSAN cluster requires cautious planning, considering the expected workload capacity and impact on availability and performance.
• Upgrading vSAN components needs careful planning and execution to maintain uptime. Backing up vSAN data is critical in case of issues during upgrade of datastores or clusters. Validating the upgrade is crucial.
• Storage policies define the performance and availability characteristics of vSAN datastores, including read/write performance, IOPS requirements, replication, and redundancy, directly impacting VM performance and cost.
• vSAN replication features enable the creation of secondary copies of data for disaster recovery. Understanding replication options (full, incremental, or differential) and their impact on performance is crucial.
• Regular backups of vSAN data are important for disaster recovery, considering different methods (full, incremental, or differential).
• Implementing a comprehensive disaster recovery plan considers vSAN replication and data protection strategies, requiring regular review and practice.
• Monitoring I/O performance metrics in virtual machines can highlight potential issues, bottlenecks in application, storage, or physical infrastructure.
• Placing VMs in vSAN-aware clusters with proper storage configuration aligns storage utilization and enhances productivity.
• The IOPS and throughput requirements of the VMs influence the configuration of the vSAN and policies. Matching VM needs to the vSAN infrastructure is essential.
• Ensuring data encryption at rest is crucial for security in a production environment.
• Implementing proper access controls to vSAN datastores, policies, or clusters ensures authorized personnel access.
• Adhering to security best practices throughout the lifecycle of the vSAN cluster is critical. This includes patching vCenter, configuring it securely, and ensuring timely updates to vSAN and security patches.
• Enabling vSAN health alerts provides valuable insight into the health and performance of the vSAN datastore, enabling proactive responses to potential issues.
• Disabling vSAN health alerts can be useful during deployments or maintenance, but reduces system health visibility.
• Granular vSAN health alert configurations allow administrators to select specific alerts.
• vSAN health alerts primarily focus on potential issues like disk failures, performance degradation, and connectivity problems.
• Enabling alerts is generally recommended for production environments to monitor system health.
• Alerts can cover various aspects of the vSAN infrastructure, such as datastore issues, performance anomalies, or connectivity problems.
• Alert detail depends on configuration, including descriptions, and affected components.
• Disabling alerts is considered during planned maintenance or non-critical testing.
• Effective use depends on well-defined alert thresholds and response procedures.
• Monitoring tools like vRealize Operations can consolidate alert information.
• Balancing health monitoring benefits with alert fatigue is crucial.
• Alert management should provide methods for suppressing or filtering alerts.
• Understanding vSAN health alert types (critical, high, medium, low) helps prioritize issues.

Adding Storage to a vSAN Datastore

• Understand vSAN's software-defined architecture, leveraging multiple hosts for pooled storage.
• Ensure necessary licenses for the vSAN capacity and features are in place. Confirm vCenter Server and ESXi host licenses.
• Access and navigate to the inventory and vSAN cluster in vCenter.
• Identify the datastore needing expansion, noting the current status.
• Plan and determine hardware for new storage, considering compatibility and capacity needs aligned with application workload requirements.
• Plan storage allocation, considering capacity and performance required, ensuring sufficient I/O bandwidth.
• Ensure new storage devices are connected, recognized by vSAN and have appropriate firmware/driver updates. Confirm ESXi host configurations/connectivity if any changes.
• Utilize vCenter to add the new storage, potential data/datastore rebuilds might be triggered.
• Verify added storage space availability and functionality through monitoring. Review CPU, memory, and disk I/O metrics for ESXi hosts.
• Troubleshoot any issues; vCenter and VMware vSAN logs are valuable resources. Refer to VMware documentation.

Considerations for Adding Storage

• Verify compatibility of new storage with vSAN and ESXi. Existing storage array family type should be considered.
• Plan the capacity allocation, considering how much storage to add and when.
• Determine I/O requirements of both existing and new storage and ensure adequate bandwidth for applications.
• Ensure proper redundancy for the added storage for high availability and fault tolerance.
• Plan appropriate hardware configuration including storage controllers and firmware updates.
• Confirm interoperability and compatibility with the wider vSphere environment, and existing storage protocols.
• Review all licensing requirements for the added storage capacity and features.

vSAN Maintenance Mode

• vSAN cluster must be healthy for maintenance mode entry. Assess applications, plan for downtime.
• Ensure no critical operations, disk failures, network problems, or overloads.
• Complete any outstanding maintenance tasks before entering maintenance.
• Procedures vary; consult vSAN documentation.
• Verify readiness, document steps, and access through vCenter or other appropriate consoles.
• Post-maintenance, perform thorough checks, diagnostic tests, and monitoring for re-establishment of health and functionality.
• Follow documentation for re-entry.
• Thoroughly test the cluster and dependent components post-maintenance to ensure operational stability. Comprehensive testing should verify accurate recovery and performance maintenance.
• Detailed documentation is crucial.

Configuring and Managing Storage Resources

• vCloud Foundation 5.2 utilizes vSAN and other storage technologies for VM storage.
• vSAN, integrated into vCloud Foundation, provides a highly available and scalable solution using commodity hardware. Storage policies are configurable.
• Policies define storage parameters for VMs and vApps, regulating I/O performance, capacity limitations, and availability. Policies can be inherited or defined separately for specific items.

Storage Policies

• Policies dictate storage parameters (performance, capacity, availability) for VMs and vApps.
• Policies can be inherited or defined explicitly for each VM or vApp, promoting consistency and facilitating issue resolution.
• Optimization through thin provisioning, compression, and deduplication is possible.

Management and Performance

• vCloud Foundation tools monitor storage performance metrics (latency, throughput, capacity), enabling proactive resolution of issues.
• Storage issues (disk failures, performance degradation) are detectable through logging and alerting.
• Capacity planning through monitoring and forecasting allows for anticipating future demand.
• Optimizing I/O patterns, leveraging hardware acceleration, and appropriate vSAN configurations (informed by monitoring) enhance performance.

Storage Technologies Integrated

• vCloud Foundation can integrate with other storage technologies (native vendor arrays) to broaden storage choices.
• Integration of varied storage types with vCloud Director's administration.

Advanced Storage Considerations

• High availability and disaster recovery (data across locations) are for data availability and business continuity.
• Deduplication and compression reduce storage footprint and improve efficiency.
• Data encryption safeguards sensitive VM data.
• Storage tiering (moving data between tiers like SSD and NAS) is a common management strategy.