Virtual SAN witness

[leosilvapaiola]

Hi community!

We are trying to quote for a customer a ROBO solution the "vsan witness", and according to the documentation:

"The Virtual SAN witness includes a license so there is no need to purchase Virtual SAN licenses for a Virtual SAN witness."

Now we are trying to find this "witness" SKU in the price list but it seems it does not exist under that name.

We need help on that, because the customer actually saw a "free trial" for vsan witness, so there's got to be a way to include that feature in the quote.

Reference jpeg:

[zdickinson]

Good morning, I don't believe you will have a SKU for the witness.  The witness can be a licensed host used for other purposes.  Or it can be the witness included with vSAN, which is a virtual appliance that can run on a non-vSAN licensed host.  The appliance is a nested ESXi instance.  Hope that helps.  Thank you, Zach.

[leosilvapaiola]

Hi Zach, thank you for your response.

So if I understand correctly, if the customer purchase the VSAN ROBO license, the witness is included in that license and then they can deploy it at the main site like it shows in the architecture reference?

If so, can you please point me to the documentation addressing this matter?

Because the main issue here and the reason I'm asking to the community is that I haven't found the proper documentation. Only the "vmware-vsan-62-licensing-guide" but is not a complete guide for this matter.

I appreciate all the help you send my way.

Thanks in advance.

[elerium]

Not sure if there is an associated SKU for it, but the vSAN witness appliance is free and has it's own license embedded into the appliance. The witness appliance can be downloaded here (download is for vSAN 6.5 only): https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?productId=618&downloadGroup=WITNESS-OVA-65

When setting up the witness appliance, you'll see the licensing step where you consume the license that comes with the appliance, there's a screenshot of it here http://cormachogan.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/4.-lic.png:

Step-by-step deployment of the VSAN witness appliance - CormacHogan.com (full page here)

[admin]

There is no trial version of vSAN Witness Appliance. I think this is the reason you are not getting "witness" SKU in the price list. Any vSAN customer, who wants ROBO or Stretched vSAN cluster, can use vSAN Witness Appliance free of cost.

So if I understand correctly, if the customer purchase the VSAN ROBO license, the witness is included in that license and then they can deploy it at the main site like it shows in the architecture reference?

The Witness license is not included in the ROBO license as Witness Appliance has its own license. After deploying Witness Appliance, you can add it as a normal ESXi host in the vCenter inventory. When you add Witness Appliance as a Host in vCenter Server, you would get option to assign the embedded license as shown below in screenshot.

If you use some other license at the time of adding Witness Appliance to the vCenter inventory then you cannot change it back to use the embedded license.

This is the warning message which you get when you select some other license than embedded license while adding Witness Appliance to the vCenter inventory:

"You are about to change the embedded OEM licenses of some assets and you might be unable to assign back these licenses at a later stage. Contact your hardware vendor for confirmation."

vSAN Witness Appliance has special icon (blue in color), to distinguish it from other ESXi hosts in the cluster.

Just in case, here are the download links:

vSAN 6.2 Drivers & Tools page - Download VMware vSAN

vSAN 6.5 Drivers and Tools page - Download VMware vSAN

Hope this helps.

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Cheers!

-Shivam

[zdickinson]

Good morning, Virtual SAN licensing / pricing  Does that help?  Thank  you, Zach.

[Jasemccarty]

leosilvapaiola​

I work in the Storage & Availability BU, and one of my specialty areas is vSAN Stretched Clusters & 2 Node.

As mentioned, the license for the vSAN Witness Appliance is included in the appliance itself.

When the vSAN Witness Appliance is connected to vCenter, the included (translated: free) license is automatically populated into vCenter.

Keep in mind that vSAN 2 Node can be used with any licensed edition of vSAN. This is a 1+1+1 Stretched Cluster configuration.

vSAN Standard, vSAN Advanced, vSAN Enterprise, vSAN ROBO Standard, or vSAN ROBO Advanced.

To configure vSAN 2 Node, the vSAN Witness Appliance is required (unless using a separately licensed host as a Witness).

Additionally vSAN Stretched Clusters, require a vSAN Enterprise license. While "mechanically" the same as 2 Node, Stretched Clusters are typically something like 2+2+1… to  15+15+1.

Again, the vSAN Witness Appliance licensing is included, and is automatically populated into vCenter upon adding it.

More info on Stretched Clusters and 2 Node vSAN can be found on StorageHub.

vSAN Stretched Cluster & 2 Node Guide <I maintain this document>

Hope this helps.

Jase

Jasemccarty​