VSAN and stretched data centers

[Peter_Channing]

Looking at the VSAN concept with stretched data centers as a means for migrating customers into our hosting data vcenter without downtime for the customers virtual machines. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with such a setup, either stretched data centers with VSAN or any other type of "stretched" storage that will allow for vmotion across physical data centers.

Your input in appreciated.

Peter

[depping]

Not supported, for the following reasons: vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using Virtual SAN, can I do it?

[cmiller78]

Here is a link to the vMSC supported arrays on the storage HCL:

VMware Compatibility Guide: Storage/SAN Search

A few challenges with your plan:

- You would need similar storage on the other end unless you are using something like EMC VPLEX which can front-end multiple vendor arrays

- You still need to stretch L2 to migrate in. To be honest, NSX would be awesome for your plan and I'd start looking at that before I worry about the storage. Even if you have to offline migrate a VM, allowing customers to keep their existing IP scheme permanently would be a huge plus

- You will likely run into version issues trying to get the storage stretch cluster working

As an alternative you could consider offering a DR service and use SRM/Zerto (where needed) to failover VMs as a migration strategy. You'd kill two birds with one stone - DR testing and migration. You could align this with your customer DR testing schedule so there is no additional outage.