Lots of excitement this past week, when on March 6, VMware announced Virtual SAN, a long-awaited software-defined storage platform, which will be available the week of March 10 to the general public.
For those that don’t know, Virtual SAN will aggregate locally attached disks of hosts that are part of a vSphere cluster. Both flash disk and regular spinning disk, are part of the overall system providing both capacity and resilient storage. This new feature will be part of the vSphere kernel, which will provide for an efficient and fast experience.
Another Piece of the Software-Defined Data Center
Virtual SAN is another piece in the Software-defined Datacenter puzzle and VMware seems to be delivering on that promise. They have the compute, network, management and now storage piece.
A software-defined data center is where all infrastructure is virtualized and delivered as a service, and the control of this data center is entirely automated by software.
What about Performance?
I will let this slide do all the talking, I think you will quickly realize, that Virtual SAN can perform and scale. One of the things I like as well is you can build your own Virtual SAN or purchase a Virtual SAN Ready Node. This will certainly increase the adoption of virtual SAN, for remote offices, Small-medium sizes businesses and enterprises.
Is the Virtualization Admin Role Changing?
As we move closer to a Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC), I am seeing the virtualization admin taking center stage as someone that plays a hybrid role of understanding and executing on compute, network and storage.
In traditional environments, folks typically work in silos and are engaged when a discussion about their piece of infrastructure is needed. As more work is being done in vCenter, the virtualization admin, who is comfortable in vCenter, will be delivering those services through software.
In the case of Virtual SAN, the Policy-Based Management Framework is central to delivering the ease of use and functionality.
More Resources
There are some great resources out available, and I will highlight some here for you. If you know of any more, please add your resources in the comments section below.
- Virtual SAN Product Page
- VMware vSAN Design Guide
- VMware vSAN YouTube Channel
- Hand on Lab: VMware What’s New in vSAN
Are you looking forward to VMware vSAN? Did you particiapte in the beta? Let me know on Twitter and thanks for reading!