I guess that title explains it all, starting with vSAN 7.0 U2, we now also support connecting a compute-only cluster with a vSAN cluster. Meaning that if you have a vSphere cluster that does not have vSAN enabled, you can now mount a remote vSAN Datastore to it and leverage all the capabilities it provides!
I am sure seeing this new capability will make many of you happy, as we had many customers asking for this when we launched HCI Mesh with vSAN 7.0 U1. The great thing is that there’s no need for a vSAN license on the compute-only cluster, even though we load up the vSAN Client on the Client Cluster. No, we are not using NFS, but we are using the vSAN proprietary protocol for this. Another thing that may be useful to know is that we doubled the number of hosts that can be connected to a single datastore, this has gone from 64 to 128!
Last but not least, we have also extended the Policy Based Management Framework to allow for customers to specify which data services should be enabled on a datastore level. So if you select a policy, the vSAN datastores that will be presented, should not only be able to provide the RAID configuration specified, but should also have the data services enabled you require. Those data services would be: Deduplication and Compression, Compression, and/or Encryption, as shown in screenshot of the new policy capability below.
As mentioned, the feature itself is pretty straightforward and very easy to use. There are some things to take into consideration, of course, I wrote those down here. If you want to see it in action, make sure to check the demo below.
Don’t forget to mention, that VSAN has to be an enterprise-license, standard doesn’t work.
Yes, that requirement has not changed.
Could you please confirm whether HCL Mesh is supported for Stretched Cluster?
Is a VSAN stretched cluster supported in a compute-only client HCI Mesh
Hi Duncan ! Thanks for the explanation. What are the requirements ? Same vCenter for both clusters is mandatory or linked mode is enough ?
you can find the considerations/requirements here:
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2020/10/07/vsan-hci-mesh-considerations/
Yes, all clusters need to be managed by the same vCenter Server!
Hi! nice post!
Im trying to enable the HCI mesh and I receive the error
“Failed to run the remote datastore mount pre-checks” and I cant find anything in the logs
I just want to know if you have seen this behavior.
thank you!
I have not seen that issue unfortunately… no idea why this happens.
In your Video you have a 2 node compute cluster, but in real with GA version of 7.0U2 I was not able to mount remote datastore with only 2 node compute cluster. Getting the error mentioned in the Post above:
“Failed to run the remote datastore mount pre-checks”. Is it a requirement also for Compute cluster, that 2 node is not supported?
Strange, as I even tested it with a single host in the compute cluster, that worked fine, and is supported.
As discussed via email, IPv6 needs to be enabled. Leaving comment here for the benefit of others.
Hi, thanks for the post
I am trying to enable the HCI mesh and I also receive the error
“Failed to run the remote datastore mount pre-checks”
I almost test everything, from network connections to cluster and host configuration, but same error!
As discussed via email, IPv6 needs to be enabled. Leaving comment here for the benefit of others.
The remote hosts needs to have ipv6 enables? Or the vsan cluster nodes also??
Hi Duncan, just a quick question, it is supported to mount a remote vSAN datastore that comes from an streched cluster in a compute only cluster?