The use of vSAN ready nodes
The benefits
However, from an architect’s perspective vSAN ready nodes are one of the ways of reducing the time to deploy a vSAN design. They are not a replacement for the design process itself.
An architect still needs to still consider the business intended use case and take care to understand the workload requirements such as performance, availability, and recoverability to really take advantage of the vSAN ready node approach.
Once a traceable logical design approach is created and validated, outputs such as IOPS, VM count and capacity can be quickly used in the vSAN ready sizing tools to create a flexible strategy BOM with easy SKUs for procurement teams.
Enterprise architects can use the vSAN ready node approach to select operationally familiar, multi-use base host patterns and amend physical components as required for specific cluster or pod use cases (ie Performance of workloads, licensing CPU planning, capacity and density need).
I regularly spend time with customers and partners discussing the use of vSAN Ready nodes with their projects.
Below is a link to my “vSAN Ready node design considerations” mind map and list of useful links for more detailed information an architect may require when using vSAN ready nodes as part of their SDS strategy.
Useful vSAN Ready Node Links
vSAN Ready Node – Compatibility Guide https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/pdf/vi_vsan_rn_guide.pdf
vSAN Hardware Quick Reference https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/vsan_profile.html
vSAN Ready Node Sizer Tool https://vsansizer.vmware.com/
vSAN Cache Sizing Info https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2017/01/18/designing-vsan-disk-groups-cache-ratio-revisited/
ESXi Boot disk Info https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2017/04/05/m-2-ssd-boot-device-vsan/
What you can and cannot change on vSAN Ready node blog Post – https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2017/03/14/can-cannot-change-vsan-readynode/ Knowledgebase article – https://kb.vmware.com/articleview?docid=52084
How to configure a Ready node https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/vsan/vmware-how-to-configure-vsan-ready-node.pdf
Useful VMworld
vSAN Tech Talk Video – vSAN Ready Nodes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPsd9f-4aY8
vSAN Ready Node Sizer demo video by
Hands-on Lab – vSAN Sizing Workshop Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSb8cx9ADco
Tools and Tips for vSAN Assessment and Design Video – vSAN Mythbusters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcyOFKnkeV4