vsan

vSAN Storage Rules policy capability allows to set dedupe/compression/encryption per VM? The 2026 update!

Duncan Epping · Oct 1, 2026 · Leave a Comment

It seems to be a regularly question, and with most recent releases things have changed once again, so I figured I would rewrite my post and point from the original to this update. So what is the question? When you create an SPBM policy you will see a screen which seem to indicate that certain data services can be enabled on a per VM basis. Those data services would be Encryption, Compression, Deduplication, and Hybrid or All-Flash. This is not the case of course, the Storage Rules section was intended to specify which storage services needed to be enabled (or disabled) for a particular datastore to show up as compatible with the policy.

Now with 9.1 various things have changed, and I want to call this out. First of all, when you have Auto-RAID enabled for the policy you don’t even see all the options any longer.

Now, when you disable Auto-RAID the below is what it looks like.

Confusingly, this seems to indicate that these options were only here for disabling/enabling dataservices, however we now that this is not the case. So let’s clarify what these do and which version does what, as I am mildly confused as well at this point. I created a table which hopefully helps explaining how this works and what does what?!

Version	Service	Rule	Function
All versions (OSA and ESA)	Encryption	Data-At-Rest	Will only present datastores which have data-at-rest-encryption enabled
All versions (OSA and ESA)	Encryption	No encryption	Will only present datastores which have data-at-rest-encryption disabled
All versions (OSA and ESA)	Encryption	No preference	Will present datastores with or without data-at-rest encryption enabled
All versions (OSA)	Storage tier	All flash	Will only present datastores which are All-Flash
All versions (OSA)	Storage tier	Hybrid	Will only present datastores which are Hybrid
All versions (OSA)	Storage tier	No preference	Will present datastores that are All-Flash or Hybrid
All versions (OSA and ESA)	Data Reduction	Deduplication and compression	Will only present datastores which have deduplication and compression enabled
All versions (OSA and ESA)	Data Reduction	Compression only	Will only present datastores which have compression enabled
vSAN 9.1 and later (ESA)	Data Reduction	No data reduction	Will only present datastores which have compression disabled, it will not disable compression or deduplication!
Pre vSAN 9.1 (ESA)	Data Reduction	No data reduction	Disables Compression on all objects associated with the policy
All versions (OSA)	Data Reduction	No data reduction	Will only present datastores which have compression disabled, it will not disable compression or deduplication!
All versions (OSA and ESA)	Data Reduction	All versions (OSA and ESA)	Will present datastores with or without deduplication and compression enabled

Will vSAN OSA Hybrid be available in future versions?

Duncan Epping · Sep 29, 2026 · Leave a Comment

I’ve had this question three times in the past two weeks surprisingly enough, will vSAN OSA Hybrid be available in future versions? I thought most people would have known or heard by now, but apparently that is not the case. With the release of VCF 9.0, and vSAN 9.0, a deprecation notice was releaaed for vSAN OSA Hybrid. The same applies to RDMA for vSAN OSA. It was listed in the release notes here.

Deprecation of the hybrid configuration in vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA):
The hybrid configuration in vSAN Original Storage Architecture feature will be discontinued in a future VCF release.

Deprecation of support for vSAN over RDMA:
The support for vSAN over RDMA for vSAN OSA will be discontinued in a future VCF release.

Note, this means that vSAN OSA All-Flash has not been announced for deprecation, just the hybrid variant. Also note, that for hybrid the release at which it will be deprecated has not been officially announced either, but expect it to be in a major upcoming version.

VCF Native S3 Object Storage Tech Preview “available” now!

Duncan Epping · Sep 9, 2026 · 1 Comment

Some may have noticed, others may have read over it, but in VCF 9.1.1 a brand new capability is available as a Tech Preview.

VCF 9.1.1 introduces a Tech Preview of native, S3-compatible object storage built directly into vSAN. By eliminating the need for third-party add-ons, native object storage provides a unified, scalable, and multi-tenant object storage platform for modern workloads.

Now the words “Tech Preview” are key here, and one thing that is not mentioned is that this Tech Preview is only available via a request. Meaning that you will need to request access to the documentation via your VMware representative, as the candidates for the Tech Preview will be selected by product management. The capability is not available in the UI, and can only be enabled when you have the documentation and access to the binaries. Cormac described this extensively in his blog here.

The Native S3 capability can only be enabled when running vSAN ESA, so that is the first requirement. Secondly, VCF 9.1.1 (with Supervisor) is a hard requirement, with preferably VCF Automation included as well. Although it is possible to use the S3 capability without VCF Automation, with VCF Automation it is definitely easier to implement if you ask me. Also, VCF-A provides the framework for multi tenancy capabilities, which appears to be a requirement for most of the customers I talk to.

Let’s break this down a bit further. I am looking at this from a VCF/VCF-A perspective, so how does this work? The Object Storage capability is enabled for a region. Each organization (tenant) with access to that region gains access to the capability. This enables them to create an S3 Object Storage (as a service) instance. When you have created an object storage service instance, you can create buckets and have users/developers/services consume those buckets as desired. Just to make it clear, the bucket can be used by a developer to store data, can be used as a backup target for VKS/DSM, for example, but can also be used for AI use cases. I recorded a demo a while back, and you can watch it below if you want to have an idea of what it looks like. There’s also a nice introductory blog by Pete Koehler here, and a fantastic post by Cormac here. Make sure to go back to Cormac’s blog regularly, as knowing him, he will have a series diving deeper coming soon. Now go an watch the demo, it gives a good idea of what is available now as a tech preview and will be GA probably in 9.1.2.

Native VCF S3 Object Storage demo!

Duncan Epping · Jun 23, 2026 · Leave a Comment

Stop paying the public cloud tax: Native S3 Object Storage for VCF changes everything! As I mentioned this on a recent podcast I did with Rakesh, so I took sometime this week to narrate the demo and here it is. In this demo you will see the VCF Automation UI and how VCF S3 Object Storage is enabled and configured so that it can be consumed by whomever needs it. That could be for backup purposes for instance, it could be (sovereign) AI, but could also be a target location for an application to store it’s data. Basically anything that speaks S3 can take advantage!

What’s new for vSAN in 9.1?

Duncan Epping · May 7, 2026 · Leave a Comment

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 was just announced, and that means a lot of new functionality has been released. Some of the features you already knew about, others may come as a surprise. I know Pete Koehler has a whole series he is going to release, so I am just going to introduce a couple of features that I feel everyone should know about. Here’s a list of what was just announced:

Native S3 Object Storage
Cyber Recovery enhancements with Any to vSAN ESA, Seeding, Tag-Based VM selection and more
Auto-RAID
Global Deduplication and enhanced compression
QLC support
Mixed mode for Remote Datastores (ESA <-> OSA)
Enhanced Capacity Reporting
Resizing Shared VMDKs

Now, some of these capabilities I have been talking about for a while now at events, like Native S3 Object Storage, but it is probably still worth explaining what is announced. Let’s discuss a few of the above.

Native S3 Object Storage

This, in my opinion, is probably together with the Cyber Protection platform, the biggest feature that was announced for 9.1. Most of you probably use some kind of S3 Object Storage platform as a backup destination, or you may have developers (and apps) directly accessing an S3 bucket for various reasons. S3 Object Storage use cases and total capacity have exploded over the last decade. So far, we (VMware/Broadcom) have always partnered with 3rd party vendors to deliver these S3 capabilities on top of VCF, but more and more customers have asked for a well-integrated solution that would come as part of VCF. With an upcoming patch release of 9.1 the tech preview of Native S3 Object Storage will be released.

Although the platform has been referred to as “vSAN Native Object Storage” in the past, I feel it is more native to VCF. Although the configuration can be completed entirely through the API and CLI, most customers will likely consume the solution through VCF Automation. VCF Automation will provide the ability to have tenants (organizations) create their own S3 Object Storage Service (or even multiple), and have many buckets per S3 Object Storage Service. This will provide the logical isolation you would expect from a multi-tenancy platform. As a Provider Admin you simply enable S3 Object Storage for a region, and then each tenant who has resources in that region assigned can consume it and create the service, and subsequently buckets, as shown below.

I will probably upload a demo soon and will record a podcast episode specifically on this topic.

Cyber Recovery

Recovery from a ransomware attack and protection against it, is a hot topic these days for every CIO. Just do a Google search, and you will find countless examples of companies losing millions as a result of production outages due to an attack. At Explore 2025, we showed the world what a sophisticated ransomware recovery platform would potentially look like, and with VCF 9.1 and Site Recovery / Cyber Recover, we are finally at the stage where we can say we have a solution to help you recover safely and efficiently fully on-prem!

With 9.1 not only do we provide the option to replicate from any storage platform efficiently to vSAN ESA and have deep snapshot chains, but we now also have the option to build an isolated recovery environment / clean room on-premises. This platform comes fully integrated with VCF, and provides an orchestrated workflow to recovery from a ransomware attack. On top of that, the platform integrates with an EDR solution like Carbon Black or CrowdStrike. to ensure recovered data is clean. Of course, it will also work with other EDRs, but it would just not have the automated scanning and cleaning just yet. I’ve had Jatin on the podcast not too long ago to explain all the benefits of the platform, and will be having another episode on this topic soon!

Global Dedupe and enhanced Compression

From an efficiency perspective, various new enhancements have been introduced. Global Deduplication was already part of vSAN ESA, but only available through a support request, as of 9.1 the feature is available for all customers right there in the UI. Along with Global Deduplication going GA, support for Encryption at Rest with Global Dedupe has also been added. For European customers, do note, support for stretched clusters is not there just yet, so some of you have to wait with enabling Global Dedupe. Besides Global Dedupe, a brand new compression algorithm has been added. In the past, compression was done using LZ4, going forward, compression will be done using zStandard. zStandard allows for better tuning, making it more capacity and cost (CPU) efficient, which should result in a higher compression ratio over time.

Auto-RAID and QLC

Last but not least, I should probably also briefly talk about QLC and Auto-RAID. QLC support is mainly intended for Cyber Recovery deployments. As you can imagine, this is the perfect use case for a lower-tier flash device, which provides high capacity at the cost of performance and endurance. This is something to definitely keep in mind, as these devices are definitely not intended to be used in regular production environment. As always, VMware will provide guidance in terms of what is supported and what not, and special Ready Node configurations will be created for Cyber Recovery specifically.

Auto-RAID is a feature that surprised me personally as well. I had heard about plans to develop a new RAID mechanism, but hadn’t realized it was going to ship in the 9.1 release already. This new storage policy option allows vSAN to make intelligent decisions around the to be used RAID configuration for each object based on the size of the cluster, and the features enabled on the cluster. In other words, if you have Stretched Cluster enabled, Auto-RAID will ensure your VMs are stretched and protect the VMs within a site accordingly, based on the number of hosts. If Auto-RAID is enabled, all 9.1 clusters can be managed using the same policy if you prefer vSAN to make the decisions for you! Why is this useful? Well, if the size of the cluster changes, or the cluster is (un)stretched, the Auto-RAID policy will automatically re-configure all associated VMs. This removes the risk of having VMs incorrectly configured and removes the administrative burden of having to make changes to a policy and re-apply it to all the VMs.

I have planned for a podcast recording with Pete Koehler later this week, so expect a brand new episode covering all the above (and more) dropping soon!