vCenter - vSAN

[WallaceTech]

Hello everyone.

I was wondering if anyone could advise on a couple of points for me regarding vCenter & vSAN. I am looking to start using it but I am unsure if vCenter can live on the vSAN datastore?

I am guessing if it can then vCenter needs to be built on local storage and then storage vMotion over to it. however this raises another question, does vCenter need to be up and running to then be able to present the vSAN datastores to the host?

Many thanks

Craig Wallace VCP 5

[Cormac Hogan]

William Lam wrote a blog post on how to overcome this 'chicken and egg' situation here - http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/09/how-to-bootstrap-vcenter-server-onto.html

[WallaceTech]

Thanks mate. I had already had a read of Williams blog. great read. The part that I am stuck on with his blog is what he says

"In my environment, I start out with a single ESXi 5.5 host which contains a single SSD and SATA disk and I create single VSAN node from that ESXi host and contribute its storage to the VSAN datastore. I then deploy a vCenter"

So without vCenter where is he creating a vSAN node and how is he adding it to the vSAN datastore?

Many thanks

Craig

[Cormac Hogan]

Hey Craig,

Possibly esxcli vsan cluster join but not 100% sure.

I'll ping William, ask him to confirm.

Cormac

[WallaceTech]

Thanks very much. I appreciate that. I did drop him a message over the weekend via his website but it might not have got to him.

Thanks again

Craig

[William Lam]

Hi Craig,

Not sure if you saw Part 2 http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/09/how-to-bootstrap-vcenter-server-onto_9.html which goes into the details (there was just too much to cover in one article so I wanted provide the background/plan and the second one goes into configuration). Using ESXCLI, we can create an initial VSAN Disk Group and then as Cormac mentioned, we're using the "esxcli vsan cluster join" to create a single VSAN Cluster and this will consume the storage from the Disk Group. Once you do that, you'll have a single node w/VSAN Datastore in which you can deploy anything, in this case I wanted to deploy vCenter Server. Once that's deployed, you can then use VC to manage the remainder VSAN Nodes. Hopefully this clear things up

[WallaceTech]

Thanks William. That does make things a tad more clear.

So will the vCenter server only live on this initial datastore or can or do you move it the the vSAN datastores that you create later? I guess I am interested to know how the vSAN datastores present themselves if you first need to boot vCenter.

Many thanks

Craig

[Duncan Epping]

WallaceTech wrote:

Thanks William. That does make things a tad more clear.

So will the vCenter server only live on this initial datastore or can or do you move it the the vSAN datastores that you create later? I guess I am interested to know how the vSAN datastores present themselves if you first need to boot vCenter.

Many thanks

Craig

There is only 1 VSAN datastore in your VSAN cluster... all hosts in your cluster join that datastore!

[WallaceTech]

Thanks guys. So i am cracking on slowly following Williams blog. I have hit a snag.

I have installed my ESX to a USB key and have two drives in the server for SSD / HD.

When running esxcli vsan storage add -d HDD-DISK-ID -s SSD-DISK-ID

I am then prompted that one of the disks have partitions. How can i wipe the drives via the command line so that this will progress. Not had to do this before with ESX.

Thanks in advance

[WallaceTech]

i used partedUtil getptbl “/vmfs/devices/disks/devicename”

[Vikas Shitole]

Yes partedUtil should work.

[Karthik Balachandran]

Virtual SAN Automatic "Add Disk to Storage Mode" Fails | VMware vSphere Blog - VMware Blogs- FYI