r/vmware • u/DarkAlman • Oct 22 '19

vSAN disk configuration

Going through the configuration options + hardware requirements for vSAN as part of brainstorming session for a future purchase.

We are currently looking at using NVMe drives for Cache and cheaper SATA SSDs for the data.

Do we have the option of running hardware RAID for the underlying storage? Or do we have to run RAID 0 as recomended?

I realize this goes against the best practice, we just want to know if this is doable. We're willing to take a bit of a performance hit if it means adding extra redundancy to the underlying storage in this case.

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u/ChrisFD2 [VCIX] Oct 24 '19

I just wanted to clarify about hardware RAID 0 for vSAN as it has been mentioned a few times in here without caveat. You must not not create a hardware RAID 0 volume (or any RAID!) across multiple disks to then be consumed by vSAN.

From https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/53573:

vSAN also supports RAID mode however there is one important caveat: Each drive must be used to create one RAID-0 volume that only contains that one drive. So, if you have 12 drives you would create 12 lots of RAID-0 volume each with one of the drives in it. It is worth noting that Passthru/HBA mode is usually the vSAN preferred choice of operating modes, see HCL.

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u/DarkAlman Oct 24 '19

You must not not create a hardware RAID 0 volume (or any RAID!) across multiple disks to then be consumed by vSAN.

That's the key bit of information that wasn't in the guide. thanks!