VSAN Best practice

[souvik1979]

Recommending best option to VSAN cluster in a single Datacenter
We will be getting flash storage from HP 3PAR. We will configure them ESXi6.5 U1 and managed by vSphere 6.5. each host will be 2 CPU 18C Intel Xeon and 1TB RAM
We won't be configuring as strected cluster
1st cluster 7 ESXi Host
2nd cluster 5 ESXi Host

1. How many diskgroup would be configured with how many capacity and cache disk
2. Size of cache disk per ESXi host
3. Recommended size of capacity disk if any for medium IOPS
4. VSAN port group recommendation if any
5. Do we need to configure HA afterwards VSAN configuration
6. Is it possible to recreate VSAN cluster in case of hard disk failure. hot add disk to the ESXi server?
7. VSAN storage policy best practice

[asecor]

I would highly recommend reading through - https://www.vsan-essentials.com/ - first.

You don't mention what workload profile you are dealing with, what sort of storage capacity requirements you have or what you are getting specifically from HP.

Check out https://vsansizer.vmware.com/ ​as I believe ​it will answer the majority of your questions.

[souvik1979]

Thanks asecor , that was really helpful vsansizer. I still want to know about the Network piece. Is that ok to place vSAN port group in standard switch, or dv switch is preferred? We will be having ESXi with 6 NICs configured.

[asecor]

It is really up to you/your standards if you should use a vDS or vSwitch. Check

https://www.vsan-essentials.com/chapter-3-vsan-installation-and-configuration#vsan-networking​ ,  VMware vSAN Network Design and Introduction to vSAN.