vSAN

Identify drives used in vSAN with LED Blinking

Eknath -

We generally hear lot of use cases about storage running out of space in vSan and add new drives or scale up/out the servers. Have you ever thought of the environment that is over provisioned and hardware vendor is just charging hundreds of dollars per month for a drive, your

vSAN encryption

Eknath -

vSAN encryption was introduced in 6.6 to encrypt the data at both the drive levels i.e.,  cache and capacity disks that are part of a vSAN datastore. This is so easy to configure, do not require any in guest agents and supports hybrid, all flash , stretched cluster, dedup /

Object Space Reservation

Eknath -

If you are familiar with thin vs thick provisioning disk, this post will help you understand much easier about the OSR (Object Space Reservation). By default, virtual machine storage objects deployed on vSAN are thin provisioned.  OSR is one of the storage policy, that specifies the percentage of the logical size

Disk Stripes in vSAN

Eknath -

Striping is not a new word in storage world. In vSan, Striping splits the data of a given object into multiple stripes (drives), also known as segments but not necessarily multiple hosts. Each stripe is accessed simultaneously, potentially increasing performance in hybrid configurations. vSAN allows for up to 12-way striping although 1

Failures to Tolerate (FTT)

Eknath -

FTT is familiar name when working on vSAN and I consider this as most important policy when designing a vSan cluster. In this post, I am going to quickly walk you through the use of this policy and how it works.. The Number of Failures to Tolerate capability addresses the key

RVC Commands – Part 3

Eknath -

In continuation to my previous posts part1 and part2   vsan.support_informationvsan.cluster_change_autoclaim vsan.host_claim_disks_differently vsan.observer_process_statsfile vsan.upgrade_statusvsan.cluster_info vsan.host_consume_disks vsan.ondisk_upgrade vsan.v2_ondisk_upgradevsan.cluster_set_default_policy vsan.host_evacuate_data vsan.perf. vsan.vm_object_infovsan.cmmds_find vsan.host_exit_evacuation vsan.proactive_rebalance

RVC Commands – Part 2

Eknath -

In continuation to the previous post Part 1   vsan.vm_perf_statsvsan.disable_vsan_on_cluster vsan.host_info vsan.proactive_rebalance_info vsan.vmdk_statsvsan.disk_object_info vsan.host_wipe_non_vsan_disk vsan.purge_inaccessible_vswp_objects vsan.whatif_host_failuresvsan.disks_info vsan.host_wipe_vsan_disks vsan.reapply_vsan_vmknic_configvsan.disks_stats vsan.lldpnetmap vsan.recover_spbm

RVC Commands – Part 1

Eknath -

RVC (Ruby Virtual console) is an interactive command-line console user interface for VMware vSphere and Virtual Center. It is bundled with both VCSA and the Windows version of vCenter Server. RVC is becoming one of the primary tools for managing and troubleshooting Virtual SAN environments. Here are some of the RVC commands that

vSan force provisioning

Eknath -

I would like to brief here about one of the rules in vSan storage policy i.e., Force Provisioning, it may sound very easy, but at times can put the environment in trouble. Force provisioning is the rule which can be selected when creating a new storage policy as shown below: I

Convert a vSan stretched cluster to 3 node and above

Eknath -

Stretched cluster to multi node vSan cluster    I assume most of you are aware about stretched cluster and how the component splits between the hosts/witness appliance. In this blog, I am going to walk you through the steps to convert a 2 vSan stretched cluster to a 3 node vSan cluster. What

Convert multi node vsan cluster to one node vsan cluster

Eknath -

One node vSan cluster:    Have you tried building a one node vsan cluster ? or convert exiting multi node cluster to one node. Though its not recommended by VMware, it is possible to have one node vsan cluster but with limitations like no data protection as the single node cluster is

clomd value change in all hosts

Eknath -

CLOMD:  CLOMD value can be changed in multiple ways, here I am showing two ways i.e., powershell or cli   CLI: Take ssh to hosts in cluster and use below commands (6.x version) to fetch the clomd values and change the values:                      esxcfg-advcfg --get /VSAN/ClomRepairDelay    

Change vsan network subnet for hosts in vSan enabled cluster

Eknath -

When working on lab environment, I got an idea of changing the complete vSan subnet for hosts and immediately started working on it without waiting a minute, with paper work first , before implementing it and finally ended with a success..   Here is my lab environment details: No of hosts in

Convert multi node vsan cluster to 2 node stretched cluster

Eknath -

Recently I have got a request to convert the multi node vsan cluster (3 hosts) to stretched cluster (2 hosts + 1 witness). Since this is for a production environment with FTT 1, I planned this in two phases: Phase 1:   1. Deploy the witness appliance with all necessary licensing, networking, routing

VSAN troubleshooting commands

Eknath -

Here are some of the important commands that can be used while troubleshooting vSan:  Please note this is for quick ref if you are looking for commands and detailed explanation will be given in posts. Get the total number of hosts that are part of vsan cluster: esxcli vsan cluster get Manually join