VMware has announced the general availability of vSAN 6.7. As vSAN continues to grow, VMware are very buoyant about how it’s performing in the market. With some 10,000 customers at a run rate of over 600 million they claim to lead the HyperConverged market with a 32% market share. From my point of view it’s great to see vSAN being deployed across 250 cloud providers and have it as the cornerstone storage of the VMware Cloud on AWS solution. vSAN 6.7 is focusing on intuitive operational experience, consistent application experience and holistic support experience.

HTML5 User Interface

Embedded vROPs plugin for HTML5 User Interface

Support for Windows Failover Cluster using iSCSI

Adaptive Resync Performance Improvements

Destaging Performance Improvements

More Efficient data placement during Host Decommissioning

Improved Space Efficiency

Faster Failover with Redundant vSAN Networks

Optimized Witness Traffic Seperation

Stretched Cluster Improvements

Host Affinity for Next-Gen Applications

Health Check Enhancements

Enhanced Diagnostics

vSAN Support Insight

4Kn Device Support

Improved FIPS 140-2 Validation Security

There are a lot of enhancements in this release and while not as ground breaking at the 6.6 release last year, there is still a lot to like about how VMware is improving the platform. From the list above, i’ve taken the key ones from my point of view and expanded on them a little.

HTML5 User Interface:

As has been the trend with all VMware products of late, vSAN is getting the Clarity Framework overhaul and is being included in the HTML5 vSphere Web Client with new vSAN tasks and workflows developed from the ground up to simplify the experience. There is also new vSAN functionality that can only be accessed via the HTML5 client.

Support for Windows Failover Cluster using iSCSI:

The legacy Flex client will still be available for use and it’s also worth noting that this is not a direct port of the Flex interface but started from the ground up. This has resulted in a more efficient experience for the user with less clicks and less time to action items. Any new features or enhancements will only be seen in the new HTML5 UI.

A few weeks back I posted around how you could use vSAN as Veeam repository using the iSCSI feature. With vSAN 6.7 there is offical support for Windows Failover Clustering using the vSAN iSCSI service. Lots of people still run MSCS and a lot still use traditional clustering. This supports physical and virtual Guest iSCSI initiators that includes transparent failover of clusters with vSAN iSCSI volumes.

Adaptive Resync Performance Improvements:

I’m not sure if this now means that iSCSI volumes are supported as Veeam Cloud Repositories …but I will confirm either way.

vSAN 6.7 introduces a new Adaptive ReSync feature that will make sure resources are available for VM IO and resync IO. This ensures that under IO stress certain traffic types are not starved of resources and allows more bandwidth to be used when there are periods of less contention. Under contention, resync IO will be guaranteed at least 20% of the bandwidth and if no resync traffic exists, VM IO may consume 100%. This is effectively regulating reads and writes to ensure optimal balance for VM and reync IO.

Destaging Performance Improvements:

vSAN 6.7 looks to be more consistent when talking about data optimizations in the data path. With the faster destaging, data drains more quickly from the write buffer to the capacity tier. This allows the buffer tier to be available for newer IO quicker. This is done via improved in-memory handling of IO during destaging that delivers higher throughput and more consistency which in turn improves the overall performance of VM and resync IO.

More Efficient data placement during Host Decommissioning:

When putting a host in maintenance mode or decommissioning a host you need to select the evacuation type for the objects on that host. This can take time depending on the amount of data. vSAN 6.7 builds on improvements introduced in 6.6 that consolidates replicas living across multiple hosts while maintaining FTT compliance. Is looks for the smallest component to move while results in less data being rebuilt and less temporary space usage. vSAN will provide more intelligence behind the data movement to reduce the time and effort it takes to put a host into maintenance mode.

Improved Space Efficiency:

In previous vSAN versions the VM swap object was always thick provisioned even if the VM it’s self was thin. in vSAN 6.7 this will now be thin by default and also inherit the policy from the VM so that the FTT is the swap object is consistent with the VM which results in more efficient storage. Previous to this, large environments would suffer with a large number of swap files taking up a higher proportionate amount of space.

Conclusion:

vSan continues to be improved by VMware and they have addressed some core usability and efficiency features in this 6.7 release. The move to the HTML5 web client was expected, but still good to see while the enhancements in resync and destaging all contributes to platform stability. The enhanced health checks add a new dimension to vSAN troubleshooting and the support insight allows users to get a better view of what’s happening on their instances.

References:

Pre release information and images sourced via VMware EABP

https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2018/04/17/whats-new-vmware-vsan-6-7/

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