Storage (vSAN only)
The Storage section of your VMware Cloud Foundation for Classic - Flexible instance order is applicable only if you select the VMware vSAN™ component.
- New instances are provisioned with mirrored M.2 boot drives.
- VMware ESXi™ servers are ordered with a 12-disk chassis and two disks are ordered for caching. The ESXi OS is placed on a single M.2 solid-state drive that does not use a disk bay. These settings are configured by default and cannot be changed.
- You can order more capacity disks by specifying values for Size for vSAN capacity disks and Number of vSAN capacity disks.
If you do not select the vSAN component for your order, the ESXi servers are ordered with a 12-disk chassis, with two disks for the ESXi operating system (OS).
Storage architecture
The storage architecture can be either vSAN ESA (Express Storage Architecture) for instances with vSphere 8 or vSAN OSA (Original Storage Architecture) for instances with vSphere 7 and 8.
Review the following considerations for the vSAN storage architectures:
- For Sapphire Rapids servers, both vSAN ESA and vSAN OSA are available. For Cascade Lake servers, only vSAN OSA is available.
- vSAN ESA requires a minimum of 3 bare metal servers. vSAN OSA requires a minimum of 4 bare metal servers.
- For both vSAN ESA and vSAN OSA, you can select the size for and number of vSAN capacity disks. For vSAN OSA, the size and number of vSAN cache disks are selected by default.
- For vSAN ESA, the Enable vSAN compression option is available. For vSAN OSA, the Enable vSAN deduplication and compression option is available.
- vSAN ESA is selected by default with the 25 Gb uplink speed. If you select the 10 Gb uplink speed, the vSAN storage architecture is changed to vSAN OSA, because vSAN ESA is not compatible with the 10 Gb uplink speed.
Specify the following settings for the vSAN component:
- Size for vSAN capacity disks - Select an option for the capacity disks that you need.
- Number of vSAN capacity disks - Specify the number of capacity disks that you want to add.
- Review the Size for vSAN cache disks and Number of vSAN cache disks values.
Enable vSAN deduplication and compression
vSAN storage depends on the number of servers and your total disk capacity, and the use of deduplication and compression.
The amount of storage reduction from deduplication and compression depends on many factors, including the type of data stored and the number of duplicate blocks. Larger disk groups tend to provide a higher deduplication ratio. For more information, see Using deduplication and compression.
Enable vSAN compression (vSAN ESA only)
vSAN storage depends on the number of servers and your total disk capacity, and the use of deduplication. For Sapphire Rapids servers, both vSAN ESA and vSAN OSA are available. However, the Enable vSAN compression option is available only for vSAN ESA. For more information, see Storage architecture.