Plain Virtualization

Virtual SAN (VSAN) has come a long way starting initial release in vSphere 5.5 known as VSAN 5.5 which was primary targeted at VDI workload and other not so critical workloads. Remember in Feb 2013, VMware acquire Virsto a block storage optimizing software company and liquidise in it Jan 2014.  This was nice piece of technology which took everyone by shock that it's no longer offered as a product.  How good can it be to serialize data on a block storage system when it was written in random. With VSAN 6.0 release , a part of Virsto was present in its file system and with it's native snapshot . Yes it is not using the traditional snapshot offered through vSphere which is still done on any other storage.  Now it is more applicable for Business critical apps as it also offer All-Flash VSAN model. In VSAN 6.1 release , it allows stretch VSAN cluster.  It also extend vSphere Replication with VSAN to have a RPO time of 5 minutes.  It also comes with support of ...

With the announcement of vSphere 6.0, comes Virtual SAN (VSAN) 6.0 the next release of VSAN since 5.5. This makes several improvement and I will be listing them here and do note of the differen ces as there are some improvement with changes to existing VSAN 5.5. To start clear, we need to know the terms right.  You will often hear Hybrid VSAN and All-Flash VSAN.  Hybrid is not new.  Since VSAN 5.5, it is always in Hybrid VSAN.  What it means it's a mixed of Flash or Solid State Harddisk (SSD) for cache and Magnetic Disk (MD) for persistent data. What about All-Flash, this is new in VSAN 6.0.  There will be no MD but make of all Flash/SSD for flash and SSD for persistent. source: VMware, Inc In VSAN 5.5, the cache read/write ratio was 70/30.  This is fixed and cannot be changed.  Of course in a VDI environment, this will be less favorable though it is using flash/SDD for cache since only 30% of the cache is used for write cache in a ...

Many might not know unless you receive email from VMUG or by chance saw some postings from social media. What would we be expecting from this event is unknown but I am speculating the long waited vSphere 6.0 which was on public beta since last year and have already been on Release Candidate Build.  With vSphere 6.0, we can assume we might be seeing VSAN 2.0 since VSAN is integrated to vSphere as well as Virtual Volumes as Tech Preview first seen in VMworld 2011. With all this above, we might see some new pricing or bundling.  I am hoping to see what is line up during this launch. Here is the online launch site where you can register to be reminded. You can choose from the few dates available and the first day will be on 2nd February 2015 during America time and 5th February 2015 for Asia time. Below is the dates and time: AMERICAS Date:   February 2, 2015 Time:   1:00 – 2:00 PM PST / 4:00 – 5:00 PM EST EMEA Date...

With the days getting nearer to VMworld 2014, there are so much news from VMware.  First the acquisition of CloudVolume announced on 20th August 2014, now the release of the Virtual SAN (VSAN) Sizing Tool which everyone is having a great effort trying to find one or build one. Check out the release article on this and read about its limitation or requirement at the moment supported. You will be able to access the tool here . Just to note this is an initial release, so there might be one or two bugs you might encounter.  Do help by providing feedback by clicking on the feedback icon so we can have better tool by refine it further. Bugs found on 22nd Aug Initial test, the host count always stay at 14 irregardless of the parameters given. Issue has been resolved on 22nd Aug.

Some you of you might come across when using openfiler like myself of non existing volumes however it is still mapped to the target. Or you wanted to remove those non existing volumes which keep showing in your volumes list. First, to unmap the volumes from your target you have to edit the following file and restart your iSCSI target service. iscsi_settings.xml in:  /opt/openfiler/etc/iscsi/targets remove all ghost target, only from sub tag to tag (included), not then main tag. Secondly, to remove the non existing volumes, my volumes.xml from /opt/openfiler/etc/ The file should look like the below, remove   ... /> for each of your non existing LUN.