VCF mixed host vSAN confit in Consolidated Architecture Model

[JohnH001]

Hi

IHAC that would like to

• Use the VCF consolidated architecture model to run both management and compute resource pools in a single Management Domain
• predominately use external NFS storage for their VM datastores, but
• still get the seemless bring up process & SDDC management of a VCF cluster

They are looking at requiring 13 ESXi hosts (compute + VCF management workloads).

Can anyone help answer these questions for me in a 13-host VCF environment:

1. Is it possible to have just the minimum required 4 * vSAN hosts to hold storage for the management resource pool, but then have all the remaining 9 ESXi hosts for the. Compute resource pool (inside the same MANAGEMENT domain) use separate NFS datastores for VM data?

1. Do all VCF nodes in a domain (mgmt OR workload) need to also have same vSAN config or are they able to make all of the nodes in a compute resource pool within the MGMT domain compute-only nodes so that they can use external storage?

I hope that makes sense - not an ideal scenario so I’m sure that I’ll confuse many with this question!

The alternative is that we just build all 13 nodes as a traditional VMware cluster and only use the NFS datastores.

many thanks

John

[mjha]

Hi John,

I have never tested this but I guess you can do the following:

1: During SDDC bringup, only provide details of 4 Esxi hosts in the deployment parameter sheet and let the mgmt cluster stood up with vSAN storage.

2: Add new cluster with remaining 9 Esxi hosts and use NFS endpoint IP to map the exported shares as datastore on the remaining Esxi hosts.