VSAN Data Store and FC Storage Data Store on Same VSphere HA Cluster.

[efrashad]

Hi,

We have 4 Server. Two of them has FC (Fibre-channel) adapters. We have HP MSA Storage connected to these two servers by FC. We want to create VSAN Datastore from local disks of all servers and also VMFS Data Store from MSA disks. Can we run this configruation on same Vsphere High-Availability Cluster?

Lets say how VM localted in MSA disks will be migrated to HOSTS that are not have FC adapters , and see only VSAN Data Store. And vice versa.

Did someone do it on practise. THank you in advance.

[GreatWhiteTec]

Hi efrashad,

With vSAN clusters,  you are capable or attaching other storage just like you do with a regular vSphere cluster. You can migrate your VMs using storage vMotion, and if those hosts were on a different cluster, then "share Nothing" vMotion will also do the trick, as long as the hosts are managed by the same vCenter.

Additional info:

Migrating VMs to vSAN - Virtual Blocks

New vSAN Migration Guide Available! - Virtual Blocks

Storage and Availability Technical Documents

Hope that helps...

[efrashad]

Hi GreatWhiteTec

Then When Lets say, when the hosts that connected to MSA halts because of hardware error or something else, Vsphere HA Cluster will power on all VMs that runs on it on other HOST that not connected to MSA storage.  It will do storage VMotion then. Am I right?

[GreatWhiteTec]

No. If you have 2 MSA hosts, and both go down, those VMs will not be accessible. HA will not initiate a storage vMotion for you as part of a failure, if that is what you are asking.

You would need to do the storage vMotion to vSAN prior to the MSA hosts being offline, since the vSAN only hosts do no have access to MSA. Also if you have 2 failures in a 4-node vSAN cluster, assuming default settings (FTT=1), you may also have issues with some VMs not being accessible. If you are planning to have 2 failures, then a 5-node (minimum) vSAN cluster will give you resiliency with a 2 node failure.