vSAN Max Cluster Creation in Minutes: A Quickstart Guide

Introduction

VMware’s vSAN Max revolutionizes storage for vSphere clusters, offering disaggregated, petabyte-scale shared storage. Unlike traditional vSAN, vSAN Max leverages the vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) for a fully distributed design. Here, data access isn’t bottlenecked by centralized I/O controllers. Instead, the power of each node (host) in the vSAN Max cluster contributes to processing I/O requests. This translates to linear scalability in capacity and performance as you add more hosts.

Unlocking Massive Scalability: Benefits of vSAN Max

vSAN Max addresses the growing need for high-performance, scalable storage solutions in virtualized environments. Here’s how it elevates your vSphere storage capabilities:

  • Petabyte-Scale Capacity: Support for massive datasets, ideal for data-intensive workloads like AI/ML and large-scale databases.
  • Linear Scalability: Effortlessly expand storage capacity and performance by adding more ESXi hosts to the vSAN Max cluster.
  • Disaggregated Architecture: Decouple storage resources from compute resources, offering greater flexibility and cost-efficiency.
  • Simplified Management: Leverage familiar vSAN management tools for streamlined administration.

Sizing Considerations for vSAN Max Deployments

Planning your vSAN Max deployment requires considering these key factors:

How many ESXi hosts can I include in a vSAN Max cluster?

vSAN Max clusters support a maximum of 32 ESXi hosts, but for optimal performance, VMware recommends limiting the size to 24.

How many vSAN compute clusters can connect to a single vSAN Max datastore?

Up to 10 compute clusters can connect and leverage the storage resources of a single vSAN Max cluster.

What’s the total ESXi host limit across vSAN Max and connected compute clusters?

The total number of ESXi hosts across your vSAN Max cluster and all connected compute clusters cannot exceed 128.

Can I use disaggregated storage with vSAN OSA deployments, even though vSAN Max uses vSAN ESA?

Absolutely! vSAN OSA deployments still support disaggregated storage, allowing you to share datastores between vSAN clusters using vSAN’s native data path.

How many remote vSAN OSA datastores can a client cluster mount?

Each vSAN OSA client cluster can mount up to ten remote vSAN OSA datastores.

Enabling vSAN Max Cluster: Quick start and Manual Options

vSAN Max leverages vSAN ESA, making the initial enablement process similar to creating a single vSAN HCI cluster using Quickstart. Here’s a simplified overview of the steps involved:

Initialize Cluster

Navigate to your Datacenter and select “Actions,” then choose “New Cluster.” A dialog will appear on the New Cluster screen, prompting you to enable services. Provide a name for the cluster and select vSAN from the list of services. Ensure that vSAN ESA is selected as the default option.

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For the Quickstart workflow to configure the vMotion VMkernel, ensure that vSphere DRS is enabled.

quickstart Guide vsan max

Quickstart – Cluster Basics

Quickstart for Cluster Basics begins with the initial cluster creation mentioned earlier. After creating the cluster, proceed to [vSAN Cluster] > Configure > Quickstart. Here, you can verify the previously selected basic services and then proceed to the phases for adding hosts and configuring settings.

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Quickstart – Add Hosts

The steps for adding hosts in vSAN Max are the same as those for a Normal ESA and OSA vSAN enabled cluster. Please refer to the steps outlined in the ” https://vmwareknowledgebase.com/vsan-setup-and-configuration/#quickstart-adding-hosts ” section of this Blog for guidance.

Step 1: Select Cluster Type


Proceed to configure the vSAN Max cluster by selecting “Configure” under Step 3: Configure Cluster. This action will initiate the Configure Cluster workflow. Make sure to select vSAN Max during this process.

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Steps 2 -7: Configuring the Cluster

The subsequent steps for configuring the vSAN Max cluster mirror those for a single vSAN HCI cluster. Please consult the instructions detailed in the “https://vmwareknowledgebase.com/vsan-setup-and-configuration/#quickstart-configure-cluster” section of this Blog

Once the creation of the new vSAN Max cluster is finished, go to [vSAN Cluster] > Configure > vSAN > Services. Here, you’ll see that the vSAN Max cluster is prepared to deliver disaggregated storage to vSAN Computer clusters.

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Proceed to [vSAN Cluster] > Configure > vSAN > Remote Datastore. On this screen, you’ll find the name of the remote datastore generated by the vSAN Max cluster configuration workflow. The default name will be displayed for the datastore.

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you are now ready to configure a vSAN Compute cluster and mount this datastore to the Compute cluster. 

Manually Enabling vSAN Max on a Cluster

Note: If Quickstart was used (as per the earlier section) then this section can be skipped.

Manual vSAN Max enablement is available for those that do not wish to use the Quickstart process.

For this scenario, please follow we cover that in next Blog .

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