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VMware VSAN has six dot six appeal

Virtzilla: Hyperconverged flash drives run 50% faster with latest vSAN SW

VMware says it has upped flash IO performance by half with the latest vSAN version, as well as adding myriad point feature updates.

The software is built to provide a virtual SAN by aggregating the locally-attached storage of a cluster of VMware host nodes into a shared block-access resource. It is the fundamental storage component in hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) gear such as Dell EMC’s VxRail.

VMware claimed VSAN 6.6 has 50 per cent higher all-flash IOPS performance per host than the prior version - think 150,000 IOPS/host - which should help business-critical and next-generation workloads.

The next-generation workload improvements includes vSAN for Photon being available in Photon Platform 1.1 and a Docker Volume Driver delivering support for multi-tenancy, policy-based management, snapshots and clones.

VMware told us vSAN 6.6 has support for Intel 3D XPoint NVMe SSDs, and 1.6TB SSDs used as caching drives.

VSAN v6.6 adds:

  • vSAN Encryption for data at rest – datastore level encryption in a dedupe/compression efficient way
  • Local Protection for Stretched Clusters to avoid resync over the cluster connect if a node fails
  • Unicast networking and removal of Multicast to simplify network deployment
  • ESXi Host Client (HTML-5) management and monitoring functionality
  • Enhanced rebalancing
  • Enhanced repairs, with Resync traffic throttling
  • Maintenance Pre-Check to alert you to host maintenance mode switchover impact
  • Stretched Cluster Witness Replacement UI
  • vSAN Cloud Analytics - vSAN included in “Phone Home / Customer Experience Improvement Program” including Cloud based health checks
  • API enhancements
  • vSAN Easy Install
  • vSAN Config Assist / Firmware Update
  • Enhanced Performance and Health Monitoring.

Previously encryption was done at a high-level before dedupe and compression were applied to data, and so rendered virtually ineffective. Now it works with them. Also VMware said vSAN encryption is hardware-agnostic and has simplified key management. It complies with 2-factor authentication (SecurID and CAC) and has a Defense Information Systems Agency-approved Security Technical Information Guide (STIG).

May 5 should see vSAN v6.6 availability, with list pricing starting at $2,495 per CPU, and vSAN for Desktop list prices starting at $50 per user. The vSAN Quality of Service capabilities are now available in all vSAN editions. The encryption and enhanced stretched cluster capabilities will only be available in vSAN Enterprise Edition. ®

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