VSA clusters at remote sites.

[mesteller]

We a want to deploy VSA at our remote locations - we would create a two server cluster -

I understand you need virtual center

and one appliance to run VSA

vsphere storage appliance

vsa manager - which also runs vsa cluster service I believe this runs on virtual center

we would like manage these clusters from one or two virtual center servers, they could be on different continents.

what are the WAN requirements for this type of deployment?

what happens if we loose our WAN link - will the VM'S crash?

[SantiniStorMagi]

Hi,

You should take a look at SvSAN from StorMagic. SvSAN does as you just explained and sits on 2 servers, per site, and the witness or Neutral Storage Host (NSH) is then centralized. Most of our customers choose to have several NSH instances at the datacenter for set groups of sites normally segmented by state or region. As you can imagine, and I expect is the reason why you are after a 2 server solution, there were great CAPEX advantages but with centralized management and scripted deployment functionality there were great OPEX benefits too.

I would suggest contacting one of our team who can arrange a webex to give a more detailed introduction to SvSAN and the technology and can potentially arrange a discussion with some of our larger customers.

There is some great info on the website including the 2200 site case study: http://www.stormagic.com/

[devzero]

http://www.stormagic.com/whitepapers/svsan_stretched_clusters_white_paper.php

[SantiniStorMagi]

Thanks for sharing devzero - That's a good white paper, very on point to the original question.

[devzero]

i would also Point to "SvSAN Cluster Configurations v1.3.pptx" - but i think the original question is about the Vmware product "vSphere Storage Appliance" where i cannot help because i don`t know Details about it - so "VSA" is context sensitive word.

regarding stormagic svsan, the storage does NOT go down when the wan-link gets broken and the connection to the Quorum gets lost.

[SantiniStorMagi]

Good point, the original question was VSA focused. I can answer to the best of my knowledge but it would be ideal to have someone either from VMware or non-competing with the solution to chip in. 

VSA does not support a 2 server standalone configuration, i.e. only 2 servers per site. You either have to have 2 servers mirroring with a 3rd machine acting as a witness or alternatively have a 3 server mirrored config. So if your WAN does go down it is irrelevant as the witness is still local, that said the mirrored pair will still stay up if the witness or third machine went down. Hope that helps.

Although, it just occurred to me that VSA is no longer GA as of 1 April 2014 and I believe support expires in 2018: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/VMware-vSphere-Storage-Appliance-EOA-FAQ.pdf

You may have existing licenses you're looking to utilize which would makes sense but need to consider the additional hardware costs and support count down.

That said, hope we've been of help and good luck with the project.