vsphere storage appliance (vsa) scottish vmware user group (edinburgh)

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© 2011 VMware Inc. All rights reserved Confidential vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) Scottish VMware User Group (Edinburgh) Cormac Hogan Technical Marketing December 2011

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vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) Scottish VMware User Group (Edinburgh). Cormac Hogan Technical Marketing December 2011. You Are Here. vSphere Storage Appliance. Introduction. Installation & Configuration. VSA Cluster Resilience. Maintenance Mode. Replacing a VSA Node. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) Scottish VMware User Group (Edinburgh)

© 2011 VMware Inc. All rights reserved

Confidential

vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)Scottish VMware User Group (Edinburgh)

Cormac Hogan

Technical Marketing

December 2011

Page 2: vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) Scottish VMware User Group (Edinburgh)

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You Are Here

vSphere Storage Appliance

Introduction

Installation & Configuration

Install & Configure Demo

Maintenance Mode

Replacing a VSA Node

VSA Cluster Resilience

Recovering a VSA Cluster

Summary

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Introduction (1 of 3)

• In vSphere 5.0, VMware released a new storage appliance called VSA.

•VSA is an acronym for “vSphere Storage Appliance”.

•This appliance is aimed at our SMB (Small-Midsize Business) customers who may not be in a position to purchase a SAN or NAS array for their virtual infrastructure, and therefore do not have shared storage.

•Without access to a SAN or NAS array, SMB customers are unable to implement many of vSphere’s core technologies, such as vSphere HA & vMotion.

•Customers who decide to deploy a VSA can now benefit from additional vSphere features without having to purchase a SAN or NAS device to provide them with shared storage.

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Introduction (2 of 3)

•Each ESXi server has a VSA deployed to it as a Virtual Machine.

•The appliances use the available space on the local disk(s) of the ESXi servers & present one replicated NFS volume per ESXi server. This replication of storage makes the VSA very resilient to failures.

vSpherevSphere vSphere

VSA VSA VSA

NFS NFS NFS

vSphere Client

VSA Manager

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Introduction (3 of 3)

• The NFS datastores exported from the VSA can now be used as shared storage on all of the ESXi servers in the same datacenter.

• The VSA creates shared storage out of local storage for use by a specific set of hosts.

• This means that vSphere HA & vMotion can now be made available on low-end (SMB) configurations, without external SAN or NAS servers.

• There is a CAPEX saving achieved by SMB customers as there is no longer a need to purchase a dedicated SAN or NAS devices to achieve shared storage.

• There is also an OPEX saving as the management of the VSA may be done by the vSphere Administrator and there is no need for dedicated SAN skills to manage the appliances.

• The installation & configuration is also much simpler than that of a physical storage array or other storage appliances.

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Questions

1. How many are currently using storage appliances?2. How many are currently using storage appliances in

production?3. Which vendors are you using?• HP/LeftHand• StorMagic• FalconStor• EMC VNXe• Other

4. Is anyone currently evaluating VMware‘s VSA?5. Is anyone considering placing VMware‘s VSA into

production?• What sorts of application/environment?

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You Are Here

vSphere Storage Appliance

Introduction

Installation & Configuration

Install & Configure Demo

Maintenance Mode

Replacing a VSA Node

VSA Cluster Resilience

Recovering a VSA Cluster

Summary

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Supported VSA Configurations

•The vSphere Storage Appliance can be deployed in two configurations:• 2 x ESXi 5.0 servers configuration

Deploys 2 vSphere Storage Appliances, one per ESXi server & a VSA Cluster Service on the vCenter server.

• 3 x ESXi 5.0 servers configuration Deploys 3 vSphere Storage Appliances, once per ESXi server.

• Each of the servers must contain a new/vanilla install of ESXi 5.0.

•During the configuration, the user selects a datacenter. The user is then presented with a list of ESXi servers in that datacenter.

•The installer will check the compatibility of each of these physical hosts to make sure they are suitable for VSA deployment.

•The user must then select which compatible ESXi servers should participate in the VSA cluster, i.e. which servers will host VSA nodes.

•VSA then ‘creates’ the storage cluster by aggregating and virtualizing each server’s local storage to present a shared NFS datastore.

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vCenter Server

Manage

VSA Manager VSA Cluster Service

ESXi-1

ESXi-2

VSA Datastore 2

VSADatastore 1

Volume 1(Replica)Volume 2

VSA

VSA cluster with 2 members

Volume 1Volume 2(Replica)

VSA

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ESXi-3

ESXi-2

ESXi-1

VSAVSA

VSA

vCenter Server

Manage

VSA Manager

Volume 1

Volume 2(Replica)Volume 3

Volume 1(Replica)Volume 2

VSADatastore 2 VSA

Datastore 3VSA

Datastore 1

VSA cluster with 3 members

Volume 3(Replica)

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Simplified UI for VSA Cluster Configuration

•Once the VSA Manager installation has completed and the VSA manager plug-in is enabled in vCenter, select the datacenter in the vCenter inventory and select the VSA Manager tab. The following is displayed:

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Simplified UI for VSA Cluster Configuration

1 2

3 4

Introduction Datacenter Selection

ESXi host Selection

IP Address Assignment

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Simplified UI for VSA Cluster Configuration

5 6

Select Disk Format

Ready to Install

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VSA Network Configuration

2 x dual port NICs

or 4 x 1 port

NICs.

2 x vSwitchFirst for

front-end, second for back-end

Front-end for VSA Mgmt &

NFS

Back-end for Cluster Comms & Replication

2 x physical switches for redundancy

vSwitch contains NIC team for redundancy

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VSA Storage Configuration

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VSA Storage & Mirroring

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VSA Manager

• The VSA Manager helps an administrator perform the following tasks:1. Deploy appliances onto ESXi hosts to create a VSA cluster

2. Automatically mount the NFS volumes as datastores to the ESXi hosts.

3. Monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot a VSA cluster

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You Are Here

vSphere Storage Appliance

Introduction

Installation & Configuration

Install & Configure Demo

Maintenance Mode

Replacing a VSA Node

VSA Cluster Resilience

Recovering a VSA Cluster

Summary

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Resilience

•Many storage arrays are a single point of failure (SPOF) in customer environments.

•VSA is very resilient to failures.

• If a node fails in the VSA cluster, another node will seamlessly take over the role of presenting its NFS datastore.

•The NFS datastore that was being presented from the failed node will then be presented from the node that holds it’s replica (mirror copy).

•The new node will use the same NFS server IP address that the failed node was using for presentation, so that any VMs that reside on that NFS datastore will not be affected by the failover.

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vCenter Server

Manage

VSA Manager

Volume 1(Replica)Volume 2

VSA Cluster Service

VSA Datastore 2

VSADatastore 1

ESXi-2

VSA

ESXi-1

Volume 1Volume 2(Replica)

VSA

Failover in a VSA cluster with 2 hosts

Volume 2(Replica)

VSA

Volume 1 Volume 2(Replica)

ESXi-1

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You Are Here

vSphere Storage Appliance

Introduction

Installation & Configuration

Summary

Maintenance Mode

Replacing a VSA Node

VSA Cluster Resilience

Recovering a VSA Cluster

Install & Configure Demo

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Maintenance Mode

•The are two types of Maintenance Mode:• Whole VSA Cluster Maintenance Mode• Single VSA Node Maintenance Mode

•A user can put a particular VSA node into maintenance mode in order to reconfigure the VSA in some way, e.g. rolling upgrade.

•Since only one VSA is being taken offline, the storage volumes being supplied by the storage cluster will remain online, therefore there is no need to migrate any VMs utilizing that storage.

•This does mean, however, that at least 2 volumes will be degraded with the loss of one VSA. This should be addressed as quickly as possible as a further failure in the VSA will lead to a storage outage scenario.

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You Are Here

vSphere Storage Appliance

Introduction

Installation & Configuration

Install & Configure Demo

Maintenance Mode

Replacing a VSA Node

VSA Cluster Resilience

Recovering a VSA Cluster

Summary

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VSA Cluster Node/Member Replacement

• If a VSA cluster member stops responding, its status changes to Offline in the VSA Manager tab.

• If an admin cannot bring the VSA Cluster member back online by resetting it, another option available to the admin is to replace the VSA cluster member (ESXi).

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You Are Here

vSphere Storage Appliance

Introduction

Installation & Configuration

Install & Configure Demo

Maintenance Mode

Replacing a VSA Node

VSA Cluster Resilience

Recovering a VSA Cluster

Summary

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VSA Cluster Recovery

• In the event of a vCenter server loss with no backup, the VSA cluster can be recovered with a vanilla install of vCenter.

•The admin will have to re-install the VSA plugin in the new vCenter.

•When vSphere Client is launched and the VSA tab is selected, it will contain two options (the same options visible during the initial install). In this case the admin can choose to Recover the VSA cluster.

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You Are Here

vSphere Storage Appliance

Introduction

Installation & Configuration

Summary

Maintenance Mode

Replacing a VSA Node

VSA Cluster Resilience

Recovering a VSA Cluster

Install & Configure Demo

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VSA Installed & Configured in < 10 Minutes

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You Are Here

vSphere Storage Appliance

Introduction

Installation & Configuration

Summary

Maintenance Mode

Replacing a VSA Node

VSA Cluster Resilience

Recovering a VSA Cluster

Install & Configure Demo

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Provides Storage framework for vMotion, HA and DRS

vSphere Storage Appliance: Summary

Creates Shared Storage

Simple manageability

Abstraction From Underlying Hardware

Resilient to server failures

Highly available during disk (spindle) failure

Pools server disk capacity to form shared storage

Leverages vSphere Thin provisioning for space utilization

Enables storage scalability

Installed, configure and managed via vCenter

Delivers High availability

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Questions?

http://blogs.vmware.com/vSphere/Storage

@VMwareStorage