At the VMware Explore 2022 conference, VMware announced the release of VMware vSAN 8, a solution for organizing fault-tolerant virtual storage clusters. So, what’s new in VMware vSAN 8.0:
New vSAN Express Storage Architecture
In vSAN 8, a new hyperconverged vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) appeared. It makes it possible to achieve maximum productivity and efficiency based on high-performance storage systems.
Using TLC flash memory based on NVMe technology, the ESA architecture shares many advantages over the standard vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA), which will also continue to be supported for currently standard hardware (SATA/SAS devices).
The key structural features of vSAN 8 ESA are a redesigned and patented file system (log-structured file system, LFS), a new log-structured object manager optimized for recording, as well as a new disk object format.
These technologies make it possible to achieve such a level of performance where there is practically no loss in support of the virtualization layer.
The new ESA capabilities provide advantages in the following aspects:
1. Performance without tradeoff
There are two main points here that significantly increase productivity:
- Changing the structure of data storage and processing for RAID 5/6 erasure coding algorithms. Now the performance of RAID 5/6 is close to that based on RAID-1. Due to LFS and the new format of disk objects, high data integration and resistance to failures are ensured while maintaining high speed of the read-write channel.
- Intelligent I/O traffic management for vSAN network traffic – now I/O traffic processing speed is close to native for the devices used. This is achieved, in particular, due to the adaptive prioritization of traffic and its sending at the moments of the least loading of the channel.
2. Supreme resource and space efficiency
Adaptive data processing algorithm on RAID-5, which checks the number of hosts in the cluster and chooses the optimal way of data placement (works starting with three hosts). vSAN ESA also can detect host changes, which entail revisions to RAID-5 data structures and changes to data placement policies. In this case, RAID-5 uses less raw storage capacity while maintaining reliability and manageability.
Data compression mechanisms have also been completely redesigned to optimize network and CPU load. Compression is enabled by default and can be configured at the individual VM level using storage policies, instead of changing the configuration at the cluster level.
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The new compression method provides up to 4x improvement for each 4KB block compared to the Original Storage Architecture. Also, the CPU load is significantly lower in ESA than in OSA.
Data encryption also now occurs at the upper layers of the vSAN core. Since encryption is performed on already compressed data, the encryption process happens only once, which means that data flows between hosts are also encrypted. This eliminates redundant decrypt/encrypt steps and reduces CPU and network load, freeing up resources to support virtual machines.
3. Ready-for-anything resilience
This point covers scalable and high-performance snapshots that are now taken quickly and efficiently. Now, snapshots do not have such a dramatic impact on the performance of virtual machines, and snapshot consolidation time has been reduced very significantly. The native snapshot option will be available not only in vSphere, but also for third-party solutions that use the VADP framework for VM backup.
4. Intuitive, agile operations
There are two main points here:
- Storage pool construct – vSAN 8 ESA, in addition to the concept of disk groups, discrete caching and capacity tiers, gives users the opportunity to combine devices into a storage pool, in which all devices of the host pool can contribute to a common capacity vSAN infrastructure. This simplifies disk maintenance operations and data availability management (and reduces costs).
- Simplified deployment and operation of storage resources – now there are automatic checks that allow you to understand that the ESA architecture is running on supported hardware. This will reduce the number of problematic installations.
Standard vSAN Original Storage Architecture
Classic vSAN 8 increased the logical buffer capacity limit almost three times – from 600 GB to 1.6 TB. This will allow you to get the benefits of denser placement of virtual machines while maintaining the required level of performance. Workloads can now maintain peak performance for extended periods of time.
Both vSAN architectures are ESA and OSA
vSAN Proactive insights capability – vSAN 8 users now get a higher level of compatibility thanks to the proactive insights capability, which notifies all potential software and hardware compatibility issues, even if they do not participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program. These improvements are available for both architectures.
Together, the progress of VMware vSAN technology over 10 years can be imagined as follows:
VMware Cloud Foundation+, VMware vSphere 8, VMware vSAN 8, and VMware Edge Compute Stack 2 are expected to be available for download by October 28, 2022.
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