VSANchat

the stretched cluster is very cool!

ROBO 2 Node support!

- Big focus of the launch was on great site protection, improved management and exciting new deployment options (i.e. like new flash technology for greater performance)

Stretched Cluster is very cool

Virtual SAN Stretched Cluster and ROBO, #VSANChat #vExpert

Robo 2 node is going to be game changer for my team.

@ALDTD would love to hear your thoughts on the witness. Physical or appliance? On-prem or would you use a vCloud Air solution if/when available?

@ALDTD That's great to hear ... what's the biggest appeal ... cost/simplicity/other?

clustering support on 6.1 is cool. #Microsoft and #OracleRAC

can I haz some ULLtraDIMM support too?

@CormacJHogan We'll host the witness appliance in our on-prem primary vC.

@MichaelJHaag Cost. Not having to use 3 compute nodes when we could get away with 2.

@CormacJHogan witness on #vCloudAir seems a natural fit for #VSAN ROBO

@CormacJHogan Whats the networking/vShield Edge requirements if using Witness in vCloud Air?

We're also very excited about ROBO and Stretched Cluster!

@ALDTD Thanks. And I guess the idea is to host multiple witness on the primary, and have multiple ROBO sites managed from there? Can you share numbers?

@LTVSAN Absolutely ... VSAN now supports ULLtraDIMM as well NVMe ... we had an awesome 64-node demo with NVMe from Intel at VMworld!

@hugophan Still working out those details Hugo.

also really like that vSphere Replication will now support 5 min RPO when used when replicating from VSAN to VSAN.

@CormacJHogan Where's @davehill99 when you need him?

@CormacJHogan We currently have 10 ROBO sites, 2 of which are running vSAN. Ideally, we'll roll out vSAN on all subsequent ROBO roll outs. Not all our sites have ROBO. Only larger sites when they have a bunch of physical footprint that are refreshed.

@ALDTD Thanks for sharing Tim. Sounds like an interesting project for sure

@hugophan He's never around when you need him ;-)

12000 user Lync platform

ROBO sites where they have old physical servers ready to refresh. Rather than buy new SAN for ROBO, vSAN works perfectly.

fairly pedestrian deployment, backing our new VDI environment. I assume this is one of the top use cases at this time.

maybe a dedicated Oracle cluster so you don't have to worry about Oracle licensing...

We've seen some great comments on #VSAN for ROBO and some VDI questions ... how else are people using #VSAN (or seeing it used)?

I hope a refresh for EVO RAIL with 2 node setup will follow

@VmAlchemist VDI is definitely a popular use case - the cost, predictable scaling and performance make that a great fit ... are you deploying on all-flash or hybrid?

@MichaelJHaag curious about mission critical apps on #VSAN too

@vGazza VSAN 6 is ready for mission critical apps!

replaceing 96 TB iSCSI SAN with 5 node VSAN

@LTVSAN no doubt about it. Curious about references.

@MichaelJHaag We're deploying hybrid -- 2 disk groups per host --- 1.6TB SSD and 7x2TB SAS disks

@vicenac curious how you sized it; does it look anything like what http://virtualapplia... would advise?

We're seeing lots of adoption of Virtual SAN for VDI, which many customers see as Mission Critical.

@vGazza Here is an example of T1 apps (Oracle, SQL server and a bunch of medical apps) on VSAN in healthcare: http://www.vmware.co...

@jasemccarty very true. Nothing more critical than end user computing platform.

@vmw_pooja thanks! Great use case!

Replaced aging iSCSI/FC SANs at multiple sites with VSAN clusters. Better performance, fault tolerance, cheaper, more flexible, more GB/dollar, easier to deal with.

no storage management and the ease of flash

so easy Gump could use it.

Cost to performance/capacity ratio, ease of management/ability to make changes to hardware layout/expansion.

Seamless integration into the hosts / vSphere.

VSAN just works.

@num1k We think so too! :)

How do you define tiering? Are you looking for tiering at the persistent data layer? We support hybrid systems, but the flash in those is used as a cache.

fast groups / slow groups

This is the role of storage policies IMHO.

I think this is a request for having different types of disk groups in the same cluster. Some all-flash, others hybrid. We've heard this request before and we'll highlight it to PM again Ryan. Is it something you would use?

yes, different speeds groups for different policies

@CormacJHogan We would absolutely like to see different disk groups in the same cluster. 5 hosts, 3 groups/host, 1 all fash group, 2 hybrid group would rock for me!

I'll feed this back - thanks folks

@CormacJHogan I work for a VMware partner and would say 80% of my vSAN calls have that exact request.

Is the primary reason costs or is it for other reasons, like to have primary VMs on dedicated, faster storage to ensure the right QoS?

@MichaelJHaag Cost and also flexibility. It's a tough sell to move someone from a fully tiered storage array with different disk options to only the single disk group.

I think it is achieving the same result with less striping, so it's cost

I'd think that with the performance of Hybrid VSAN, you could get a good mix of tiering/performance. Hybrid can provide 40K IOPS/host, add Caching via SPBM, could meet the need.

using SPBM, with cache reservation and stripe width, a VM or single vmdk can be individually given more performance. Several factors to determine though.