NSX and vSAN Stretched Cluster

[pan1268]

Hello Experts,

Please excuse me for asking a very basic and general question and as I am asking it I am  subsequently reading onto  various articles to get myself going on this topic. .

Actually, I would like to setup a vSAN stretched cluster over NSX environment and would like to seek help from experts -  can guide me to some basics and easy to understand design around this solution.

Many thanks in advance.

Cheers

[sk84]

Actually, I would like to setup a vSAN stretched cluster over NSX environment ...

That's not supported. See: NSX

In short:

NSX and vSAN (and also stretched clusters) can co-exist without problems but you cannot setup vSAN on top of NSX. Or to be more specific, you cannot use VxLANs for vSAN traffic.

[pan1268]

Hi,

Thank you so much for the quick reply.

Could you please explain in little more detail how the NSX ( vxlan ) and vSAN stretched cluster will have problems if they co-exists .  Asking because I am planning to deploy vSAN stretched cluster in cloud environment where we use NSX and VXLAN heavily

Cheers.

[sk84]

vSAN and NSX can coexist. This means they work independently and are also managed separately. So you can use both solutions without problems in a (stretched) cluster. However, it is not allowed to use a VxLAN for vSAN traffic or to use ESG or DLR for routing vSAN traffic in a stretched cluster in a multi site setup. For vSAN traffic, you need normal VLANs, switches, and possibly routers. Just like for management or vMotion traffic. And NSX can then be used only for virtual machine traffic.

[nealpeters86]

Hello,

Are you running NSX-V or NSX-T? I believe it should be possible with NSX-T since you have the option there to migrate existing vmkernels to a N-VDS.

Kind regards,

Neal

[sk84]

nealpeters86​

Are you running NSX-V or NSX-T? I believe it should be possible with NSX-T since you have the option there to migrate existing vmkernels to a N-VDS.

It doesn't matter if it's NSX-V or NSX-T. Placing a vSAN network (or any other statically configured vmkernel ports) on a VxLAN or Geneve overlay is not supported.

See:

However, very often, the question of compatibility is asked in the context of being able to place the vSAN network traffic on an NSX managed VxLAN/ Geneve overlay. In this case, the answer is no , NSX does not support the configuration of the vSAN data network traffic over an NSX managed VxLAN/Geneve overlay.

This is not unique to vSAN. The same restriction applies to any statically defined VMkernel interface traffic such as vMotion, iSCSI, NFS, FCoE, Management, etc.

https://storagehub.vmware.com/t/vmware-vsan/vmware-r-vsan-tm-network-design/nsx/