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Are the vSAN disks encrypted or not, and is the environment health?

Duncan Epping · Jun 2, 2025 · Leave a Comment

There was an internal question that came up, and I figured I would write a quick article as I had to grab some screenshots anyway. If you have vSAN Encryption – Data At Rest enabled, how do you verify the disks are actually encrypted? There are a couple of things you can do, and one is, of course verify in the vSAN UI that encryption is enabled in the configuration section. But you can also verify on a per-host basis if the disks have been encrypted through the command: esxcli vsan storage list. The output would look as follows:

Are the vSAN disks encrypted or not, and is the environment health?

As you can see, Encryption: true.

Of course, it is also beneficial to know if the Key Management System is reachable and healthy, as well as whether the necessary CPU instructions are available. These details can be viewed in vSAN Skyline Health, as shown in the next screenshot.

Hope that helps… OH, if you do use the Native Key Server, and encounter an error “not available on host”, verify if you enabled it with “Use key provider only with TPM” ticked or not, as if that is selected and you don’t have a TPM would result in that error.

Does vSAN support a Franken cluster configuration?

Duncan Epping · May 28, 2025 · Leave a Comment

It is funny that this has come up a few times now, actually for the third time in a month. I had a question if you can mix AMD and Intel hosts in the same cluster. Although nothing stops you from doing this, and vSAN supports this configuration, you need to remember that you cannot live migrate (vMotion) between those hosts, which means that if you have DRS enabled you are seriously crippling the cluster as it makes balance resource much more complex.

You are creating a Franken cluster when mixing AMD and Intel. You may ask yourself, why would anyone want to do this in the first place? Well, you could do this for migration purposes for instance. If you use vSAN iSCSI Services for instance, this could be a way to migrate those iSCSI LUNs from old hosts to new host. How? Well, simply add the new hosts to the cluster, place the old hosts into maintenance, and make sure to migrate storage. Do note, all the VMs (or containers) will have to be powered off, and powered on again manually on the new hosts, as a result of moving from Intel to AMD (or the other way around).

If you do end up doing this for migration purposes, please ensure it is for the shortest time possible. Please avoid running with a Franken cluster for multiple days, weeks, or, god forbid, months. Nothing good will come out of it, and your VMs may become little monsters!

#093 – Best practices for Latency Sensitive Workloads featuring Mark A!

Duncan Epping · Mar 23, 2025 · Leave a Comment

For episode 93 I invited Mark A to discuss with us what low latency workloads are all about, and what they require! Mark explains all the ins and outs of why vSphere, and VCF, is the perfect platform for latency sensitive workloads. Listen on Spotify (https://bit.ly/4bT0Lod), Apple (https://bit.ly/4kSbxiC), or just via the below embedded player!

Unexplored Territory #092 – Introducing DSM 2.2 featuring Cormac Hogan!

Duncan Epping · Mar 10, 2025 · 2 Comments

Recently Data Services Manager 2.2 was released, so it was time for me to ask my friend Cormac Hogan back on the show to share with us what was introduced. Although it was just a “minor” release, there were some major announcements, of which the S3 Object Storage capabilities are probably what will excite you the most! Make sure to listen to the episode either via the player below or on your favorite podcast app. (Spotify, Apple, etc)

Can I have an AF-4 ReadyNode for vSAN ESA with less memory?

Duncan Epping · Feb 18, 2025 · Leave a Comment

I got this question the other day, and it was around the amount of memory the AF-4 ReadyNode configuration needs to have in order for it to be supported. I can understand where the question comes from, but what most people don’t seem to understand is that there’s a set of minimal requirements, and that the ReadyNode profiles are as the KB states a “guidance”. The listed configurations are a guidance. This guidance is based on the anticipated resource consumption for a given set of VMs. Of course, this could be very different for your workload. That is why this article that describes the hardware guidance now clearly states the following:

To maintain a configuration supported by VMware Global Services (GS), all ReadyNodes certified for vSAN ESA must meet or exceed the resources of the smallest configuration (vSAN-ESA-AF-0 for vSAN HCI or vSAN-Max-XS for vSAN Max).

This not only applies to memory, but also to other components, as long as you meet the minimum specified below.

Can I have an AF-4 ReadyNode for vSAN ESA with less memory?

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About the Author

Duncan Epping is a Chief Technologist and Distinguished Engineering Architect at Broadcom. Besides writing on Yellow-Bricks, Duncan is the co-author of the vSAN Deep Dive and the vSphere Clustering Deep Dive book series. Duncan is also the host of the Unexplored Territory Podcast.

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