Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

vSAN

Lucky 7k, go vSAN!

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VMware announced the Q4 earnings last night, one of the things I was most interested about was how vSAN did in Q4. Here is what was announced yesterday, for those interested in more detail check the full earnings call. (Hint, it isn’t just vSAN doing well.)

  • We’ve reached 7000 customers
  • 150% Year over Year growth

Awesome growth (5500 customers in Q3 reached) if you ask me. Really ramping up fast now, and I cannot wait for us to hit 10k. (That is going to be a big party Yanbing / Christos.)

Before I forget, I want to thank all VMware colleagues and all of our partners who are helping us making vSAN one of the fastest growing products within VMware. We couldn’t do this without you, lets kill it again in the upcoming months!

Oh, I just noticed a great post by Lee Caswell on LinkedIn on these numbers, make sure to read that one.

XenDesktop/XenApp 7.12 MCS works with vSAN

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This is something that has kept me busy for a while. For the past 2 years there were some challenges with regards to the use of MCS and XenDesktop/XenApp in combination with vSAN. In fact, Citrix never supported vSAN and MCS, and it actually did not work either. PVS worked great in combination with vSAN however. Some customers though prefer to use MCS. After various discussions, emails and engineering discussions it seems that the problem customers faced has finally been resolved.

Citrix recently announced a hotfix that will allow you to use MCS with XenDesktop/XenApp 7.12 and vSAN version 6.0, 6.2 or 6.5. You can find the hotfix and details here: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX219670

I would like to thank a couple of folks for making this happen, from Citrix: Christian Reilly (Thanks for connecting me to everyone!), Vishal Ganeriwala, Paul Browne, Yuhua Lu, Rick Dehlinger, Amanda Austin and from VMware Weiguo He, Tony Kuo and Sophie Ting Yin. Thanks everyone for making this happen in between releases. I am certain our joint customers will appreciate this! Note, that it is not a full statement of support (yet), but a great step in the right direction!

For those interested in XenDesktop/XenApp with vSAN, make sure to read this great reference paper by Sophie Yin. It provides a lot of detail around performance etc.

 

Two host stretched vSAN cluster with Standard license?

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I was asked today if it was possible to create a 2 host stretched cluster using a vSAN Standard license or a ROBO Standard license. First of all, from a licensing point of view the EULA states you are allowed to do this with a Standard license:

A Cluster containing exactly two Servers, commonly referred to as a 2-node Cluster, can be deployed as a Stretched Cluster. Clusters with three or more Servers are not allowed to be deployed as a Stretched Cluster, and the use of the Software in these Clusters is limited to using only a physical Server or a group of physical Servers as Fault Domains.

I figured I would give it a go in my lab. Exec summary: worked like a charm!

Loaded up the ROBO license:

Go to the Fault Domains & Stretched Cluster section under “Virtual SAN” and click Configure. And one host to “preferred” and one to “secondary” fault domain:

Select the Witness host:

Select the witness disks for the vSAN cluster:

Click Finish:

And then the 2-node stretched cluster is formed using a Standard or ROBO license:

Of course I tried the same with 3 hosts, which failed as my license does not allow me to create a stretched cluster larger than 1+1+1. And even if it would succeed, the EULA clearly states that you are not allowed to do so, you need Enterprise licenses for that.

There you have it. Two host stretched using vSAN Standard, nice right?!

Can you run all-flash with vSAN 6.2 Standard license?

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As I get the following question a lot I figured I would share the answer here as well: Can you run all-flash with vSAN 6.2 Standard license? Many of you have seen the change in licensing when 6.5 was introduced. No longer is vSAN licenses based on storage hardware used, spindles or all-flash, you can use the lowest license SKU. Which of course is great for those wanting to use 6.5, but what about those who want to stick to 6.0 U2 aka vSAN 6.2? (This also works for 6.0 and 6.1 of course, but I would highly recommend 6.2 with the latest patches!)

Well there is a way to “downgrade” your license. (I would call it convert myself, but downgrade apparently is the official term for it.) There are 3 simple steps which are described in the following KB, but copied/pasted here for your convenience:

  1. Navigate to and login in to your MyVMware portal at www.myvmware.com.
  2. Locate the page with your licenses, and then select the license to convert. Once selected, click “Downgrade License Keys” from the drop down menu.
  3. Two downgrade options will be displayed in another drop down menu. Select “Virtual SAN 6 with All Flash Add-on” to convert your existing vSAN STD licenses to a STD version that includes the all-flash add-on.

New vSAN Management Pack for VROps

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I just wanted to add this pointer, if you are a vSAN and VROps customer then it is good to know that there is a new pack for vSAN. You need to be running vSAN 6.2 or 6.5 and VROps 6.4. It is a dedicated vSAN Management Pack by the way, which has as advantage for us (and you) that we will be able to iterate faster based on your needs.

You can find it here:  https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/products/vmware-vrealize-operations-management-pack-for-vsan