Scaling VSAN: Adding a New VSAN Host
In my previous post, VMware VSAN Meets EZLAB, I highlighted the implementation of VSAN into my vCloud lab. At the time of writing, 1 of 4 my vSphere hosts was down for maintenance and was not added to the VSAN cluster. Now that it’s back online, I thought I would share the experience of adding a new VSAN host…and another 2.25TB of capacity.
Here’s a “before” shot — 3 hosts configured with 6.13TB total capacity…
Step 1: Add the host to the existing VSAN cluster: I’m pretty sure I don’t have to review how this is done. Once added, configure all settings to match the other hosts in the cluster…in my setup I’m using a dedicated pNIC and vmkernel port (vmk1) for all storage traffic.
Adding new host to the vSphere cluster |
The local storage of the new host, a Dell R610 box, is configured identically to the other
three — 1 x 256GB SSD + 3 x 750GB SATA drives. And since it is
identical, that also means I had to deal with the fact that the PERC 6/i
controller does not support JBOD. So, I stepped through the work-around to identify the SSD as such…
before…the SSD show up as “Non-SSD” |
“esxcli storage…” command executed on host |
the SSD is now recognized as an SSD drive |
Step 2: Enable VSAN Service on the vmk port…
Configure vmk for VSAN traffic |
Step 3: Disk Management…
Since my VSAN cluster is configured to “Manual” mode, adding the new host’s disks to the cluster takes an additional step.…