Traditional primary storage replacement with vSAN

[markwcraft]

I would like to find out what if any one has replaced their Traditional Storage (external storage array) with vSAN.   I am in the beginning stages of looking into this. 

[depping]

This is what literally thousands of vSAN customers have done. Any particular questions you have?

[markwcraft]

Thanks!  I think I would like to see if folks have run into any performance concerns or maintenance concerns.   Along with this,  if folks have been going with HCI or vSAN ready nodes.    

[depping]

I work for VMware and am part of the business unit to which vSAN belongs, so just a disclaimer,

From a performance point of view it is typically a good idea to do an assessment to get an idea what the current IO/Workload is and then based on that design your infrastructure.

When it comes to the hardware, about 99% of our customers go with a vSAN Ready Node. They select a node type, vendor, and then customize it with more memory / flash etc. All of this is possible.

When it comes to maintenance, the big thing of course it understanding the platform and that you now combine storage and compute on the same layer, so you need to take that into account when doing maintenance. I wouldn't say that it is more complex, but it may take a bit longer when you want to move data around.