VMware vSAN 6.6

VMware vSAN 6.6 is the industry-leading software powering Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) solutions. vSAN is optimized for VMware vSphere virtual machines and natively integrated with vSphere . Since drives internal to the vSphere hosts are used to create a vSAN datastore, there is no dependency on expensive, difficult to manage, external shared storage.

vSAN already integration with vSphere and the VMware ecosystem makes it the ideal storage platform for business-critical applications, disaster recovery sites, remote office and branch office (ROBO) implementations, test and development environments, management clusters, security zones, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Today, customers of all industries and sizes trust vSAN to run their most important applications.

All-flash configurations provide the highest levels of performance with very low latencies for demanding business-critical applications. Space efficiency features such as inline deduplication and compression minimize capacity consumption, which reduces capital expenditures. Per-virtual machine (VM) storage policy-based management lowers operational expenditures by enabling administrators to manage performance, availability, and capacity consumption with ease and precision. This means no more LUN management.

Many deployment options are available for vSAN. These options range from single, 2-node clusters for small implementations to multiple clusters each with as many as 64 nodes—all centrally managed by vCenter Server. Stretched clusters can easily be configured to enable cross-site protection with no downtime for disaster avoidance and rapid, automated recovery from entire site failure.

vSAN 6.6, the sixth generation of vSAN, is designed to help customers modernize their infrastructure by addressing three key IT needs: higher security, lower costs, and faster performance. For example, vSAN 6.6 further lowers total cost of ownership by providing more resilient, economical stretched clusters that are easy to deploy and maintain.

New Features

• vSAN Encryption
• Stretched Cluster with Local Site Protection
• Removal of Multicast Support Unicast Networking (Cloud-friendly Networking with Unicast)
• ESXi Host Client (HTML-5) management and monitoring functionality
• Enhanced rebalancing
• Enhanced repairs
• Enhanced resync
• Resync throttling
• Maintenance Pre-Check
• Stretched Cluster Witness Replacement UI
• API enhancements
• vSAN Easy Install
• Enhanced Health Monitoring

The industry’s first native HCI encryption solution and a highly available control plane is delivered in vSAN 6.6 to help customers evolve without risk without sacrificing flash storage efficiencies. Operational costs are reduced with 1-click firmware and driver updates, as well as, proactive cloud-connected health checks for real-time support.

vSAN has been enhanced with up to 50% greater flash performance enabling customers to scale to tomorrow’s IT demands. vSAN storage services are integrated with the Photon Platform with full API management to support container technologies and take advantage of DevOps efficiency.

I hope this has been informative and thank you for reading!