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How does VMware Vsan work?

Author

Penelope Carter

Updated on February 22, 2026

How does VMware Vsan work?

VMware vSAN uses a software-defined approach that creates shared storage for virtual machines. It virtualizes the local physical storage resources of ESXi hosts and turns them into pools of storage that can be divided and assigned to virtual machines and applications according to their quality-of-service requirements.

Furthermore, what is VMware vSAN used for?

VMware vSAN is a software defined storage solution from VMware to eliminate the need of the additional storage boxes using the local server storage. In simple words - vSAN abstracts the local storage of ESXi hosts and makes a pool of it to be used as a shared storage which is very much optimized.

Subsequently, question is, how does vSAN write data? vSAN creates an object based distributed storage solution by aggregating locally attached storage on the host part of vSAN Cluster. Instead of Reading / Writing data directly from / to the capacity disk vSAN check if the requested data is available in the caching disk in case of read operations.

Also Know, what are two benefits of VMware vSAN?

VMware Virtual SAN Capabilities and Benefits

VMware Virtual SAN implements a distributed architecture that leverages SSDs for high-performance, read/write caching and hard disk drives (HDDs) for cost-effective data persistence. Virtual SAN will deliver optimal performance and scalability.

How VMware vSAN implemented?

Procedure

  1. Right-click a data center and select New Cluster.
  2. Type a name for the cluster in the Name text box.
  3. Turn on DRS, vSphere HA, and vSAN for the cluster.
  4. Click OK. The cluster appears in the inventory.
  5. Add hosts to the vSAN cluster. vSAN clusters can include hosts with or without capacity devices.

Which is a benefit of VSAN?

The touted benefits of VSAN include: Performance, since the local server can access data at full speed and low latency. Lower infrastructure cost, since there are no networked storage appliances. High scalability -- simply put, add more servers and get more storage.

What are the three major customer benefits of VMware VSAN?

VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage and provision. Its easy management and provisioning do not sacrifice performance, reduces costs considerably, brings assets online faster, and improves inventory management.

Do I need vSphere for VSAN?

vSphere licenses are required on the vSAN cluster to maintain a unified HCI management control plane. Note that the compute clusters require vSphere licenses, but do not require vSAN licenses.

Is VMware VSAN free?

With VSAN Free, you can deploy a 2-node cluster to present a highly available storage solution to hypervisor such as Hyper-V or ESXi for free. Thanks to this free version, we are able to deploy a highly available storage solution.

Is VSAN a VMFS?

VSAN 5.5 was based on a modified version of VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS); VSAN 6.0 gets its own file system, cleverly called VSAN file system. This new file system supports "instant clones" and more efficient snapshots. As VSAN is a feature of vSphere, it now supports 64 hosts per VSAN cluster.

How much is VMware vSAN?

A license of vSAN 6.6 is not inexpensive, coming in three varieties: Standard at $2,495 per CPU, Advanced at $3,995 and Enterprise at $5,495. That's in addition to whatever vSphere licenses you need.

What is a vSAN Datastore?

After you enable VSAN on a cluster, a single VSAN datastore is created. This datastore uses storage from every ESXi host in the VSAN cluster and contains all VM files. A container object is also created and holds a VMFS volume and stores the virtual machine metadata files.

Does nutanix use vSAN?

Nutanix operates in the user space while Virtual SAN (which includes EVO:RAIL, of course) is embedded in the hypervisor kernel. Each design offers unique challenges and choices when designing, deploying and managing hyperconverged systems. VSAN is directly plumbed into the compute cluster.

How many disks do I need for vSAN?

Each host that contributes storage in a vSAN cluster will contain at least 1 disk group. Disk groups contain at most 1 cache device and between 1 to 7 capacity devices. At most a vSAN host can have 5 disk groups, each containing up to 7 capacity devices, resulting in a maximum of 35 capacity devices for each host.

How is vSAN usable capacity calculated?

Raw Capacity

Multiply the total number of disk groups in the cluster by the size of the capacity devices in those disk groups. Subtract the overhead required by the vSAN on-disk format.

How many nodes does vSAN have?

A PowerEdge for VMware vSAN cluster can have as many as 64 nodes.

What is vSAN architecture?

vSAN is a hyper-converged storage software that is fully integrated with the hypervisor. vSAN creates a cluster of local ESXi host hard disk drives and solid state drives, and presents a flash-optimized, highly-resilient, shared storage datastore to ESXi hosts and virtual machines.

What is FTT in vSAN?

The Number of Failures to Tolerate capability addresses the key customer and design requirement of availability. With FTT, availability is provided by maintaining replica copies of data, to mitigate the risk of a host failure resulting in lost connectivity to data or potential data loss.

What is vSAN cluster?

VMware vSAN (formerly Virtual SAN) is a hyper-converged, software-defined storage (SDS) product developed by VMware that pools together direct-attached storage devices across a VMware vSphere cluster to create a distributed, shared data store.

How do I check my vSAN storage policy?

You can review the configuration settings for the default virtual machine storage policy when you navigate to the VM Storage Policies > vSAN Default Storage Policy > Manage > Rule-Set 1: VSAN.

How many vSAN datastores can be part of a Vsphere cluster?

A client cluster can mount up to a maximum of 5 remote vSAN datastores, and a server cluster can export it's datastore up to a maximum of 5 client clusters. As of vSAN 7 U2, up to 128 hosts can connect to a remote vSAN datastore - when counting the hosts from the client cluster(s) and the server cluster.

What are disk groups in vSAN?

vSAN Disk group is an logical container of storage where multiple disks are present. vSAN uses disk groups instead of single disks to form a datastore. Where all Disk Groups contributes storage and all are aggregated into one datastore.

How do you manage vSAN?

You can configure and manage a vSAN cluster by using the vSphere Client, esxcli commands, and other tools.
  1. Configure a Cluster for vSAN Using the vSphere Client.
  2. Configure a Cluster for vSAN Using the vSphere Web Client.
  3. Enable vSAN on an Existing Cluster.
  4. Disable vSAN.
  5. Edit vSAN Settings.
  6. View vSAN Datastore.

Why VMkernel is so important in VMware?

VMware calls VMkernel a microkernel because it runs on bare metal, directly on VMware ESX hosts. The VMkernal is responsible for allocating memory, scheduling CPUs and providing other hardware abstraction and operating system (OS) services.

How do I know my vSAN configuration?

Procedure
  1. Navigate to the vSAN cluster in the vSphere Web Client.
  2. Click the Configuration tab.
  3. Under vSAN, click Configuration Assist to review the vSAN configuration categories.
  4. Select an individual configuration check and review the detailed information at the bottom of the page.

How do I create a vSAN Diskgroup?

Procedure
  1. Navigate to the vSAN cluster.
  2. Click the Configure tab.
  3. Under vSAN, click Disk Management.
  4. Select the host and click Create disk group. Select the flash device to be used for cache.
  5. Click Create or OK to confirm your selections.

What are the minimum requirements to enable vSAN in vCenter server?

VSAN Requirements:
  • Minimum of 3 ESXi 6.0 host that contribute storage.
  • At least one SSD and one Hard Disk per host.
  • Hosts need I/O controller supporting Pass Through or RAID 0 (prefer them to be on the VSAN Hardware Compatibility List)
  • VMkernel port configured for VSAN traffic.

Does vSAN need RAID?

Yes that's correct – vSAN does not use hardware RAID, instead the data is protected at the software layer. vSAN uses a concept of disk groups with a minimum of one disk group required per host. A disk group can contain up to seven capacity devices and one cache device.

Which VMFS is introduced by vSphere 5?

VMFS-5 Overview

VMFS5 in ESXi 5.5 now supports upto 62 TB VMDK and non-passthrough RDM. For more information, see Support for virtual machine disks larger than 2 TB in vSphere 5.5 (2058287). Newly created VMFS-5 datastores use a single block size of 1MB.

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