VMware Vsan

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lxsw20

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#175514 2-Jul-2015 12:01

We have an ESX cluster with 4 host (HP DL380 G7/G8s)and host our production VMs on a fibre attached SAN. This all works perfectly, no problems.

One of our backup methods is to Veeam production VMs to local storage on one of our ESX host (for the likes of a SAN failure). The other 3 ESX host have little to no local storage. In a DR situation where the SAN is unavailable for some reason, is it possible to have machines hosted on the 3 ESX host that do not have local storage, using the storage on our ESX host with the local storage? I am thinking that this is what Vsan achieves, but to be honest don't completely understand how it all clicks together.

Thanks

Zeon

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#1335700 2-Jul-2015 12:43

I believe Vsan can use storage of any host in the cluster. You would need to vmotion your backups to another storage device for a period while you implement Vsan as it will destroy the datastore which is on there as far as I know. You will then move the Veeamw ith your backups back as a VM sitting on top of the storage.

Remember that if you want to recover your VMs our of Veeam you will need at least the amount of space they take up as free disk space.

Also think about IOPs - does that one host have enough if you ran all production on it?

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lxsw20

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#1335718 2-Jul-2015 13:26

Thanks. Yes IOPs between host is something we will have to consider.