As I’ve been learning more and more about VMware Virtual Volumes and the impact that it will have on everyday storage operations in vSphere one thing that I’ve been trying to find out is the impact that VVols will have on backups. In this post I’ll focus on 2 areas related to backups in a VVol environment: backup transport mechanisms and backup snapshots.

How VVols impacts backup transport methods

There are several methods that you can use to backup your virtual machine using software from vendors like Veeam, Unitrends and Symantec. The first is the traditional method, backing up using an agent inside the guest OS, this one is generally not recommended as it is not very efficient in a virtual environment. The next is the Hot Add method, this essentially allows a VM running backup software to hot add another VM’s virtual disk to it so it can be backed up without impacting the VM. This allows the backup VM to have direct access to the virtual disk to back it up. Then there is the LAN (NBD) method where a ESXi host reads VM data from storage and sends it across a network to the backup server, this method uses the network stack instead of the storage stack so it not as efficient.

Finally there is the Direct to SAN method, this method requires a backup application or proxy running on a physical server that has direct access to your SAN where your VMFS datastores reside as shown below.

This is the fastest and most efficient method as it does not consume host resources and is the shortest path for the backup server to access VM virtual disks to back them up. How VVols impacts this is that the Direct to SAN method is not supported with VVol-based VM’s. Where VMFS-based VM’s could be accessed directly by a physical backup server using the vSphere APIs and VMware’s Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK), VVols-based VM cannot be accessed this way.

The reason for this is that with VVols, VM’s do not reside on LUNs with a file system over-layed (VMFS), instead VM’s are packaged into VVols and stored directly on a storage array inside Storage Containers (logical entity). VM’s are then accessed by ESXi hosts via a Protocol Endpoint that resides within the array, the PE is essentially a special LUN that has conglomerate status (admin LUN). The PE then binds VVols to a host using secondary LUN IDs (sub-LUNs) that are assigned to each VVol and reported back to a ESXi host via the VASA Provider as shown below.

As a result of this new architecture it is no longer possible for a physical server to directly connect to a VVol Storage Container to access VMs which is why the Direct to SAN architecture is not supported with VVols. VMware may create some additional APIs to allow this direct access in the future, the physical backup server would essentially need a way to communicate directly with the Protocol Endpoint and the VASA Provider to interact with the VVols in the Storage Container directly. So why you can’t use this backup method with VVols, the other backup methods are still supported, you can read more about the backup methods in the Virtual Disk Programming Guide (pages 23-26).

How VVols impacts backup snapshots

Before a virtual machine can be backed up using the methods described a snapshot must be taken of a VM in vSphere. Doing this allows the VM to be frozen at a point of time so it can be backed up without any changes (writes) occurring while the backup process completes. Once a backup is finished the snapshot is discarded, this process (creation/deletion of snapshot) is controlled by the backup application at the beginning and at the end of the VM backup.

What happens when you take a VM snapshot in vSphere is the VM is briefly stunned and a separate delta virtual disk is created that contain any disk writes that might occur within the VM while the snapshot is active. The original virtual disk remains Read Only and all new writes that occur while the snapshot is running are deflected to the delta virtual which is Read-Write. If an additional snapshot is taken then the previous snapshot becomes Read Only and a new delta virtual disk is created that becomes Read-Write. Once you no longer need a snapshot and it is deleted all of the changes that occurred while the snapshot was active need to be merged back (committed) into the original virtual disk from the delta virtual disk. Once all that operation completes the delta virtual disk files that were created are then deleted and the original disk becomes Read-Write again.

This commit process can be time consuming based on how long a snapshot is active and the amount of writes that occur while it is active. If you have a very write intensive application running inside the VM and the snapshot is active for a long time (days/weeks) the commit process can take hours to complete.

With VVols the whole VM snapshot process changes dramatically, a snapshot taken in vSphere is not performed by vSphere but instead created and managed on the storage array. The process is similar in the fact that separate delta files are still created but the files are VVol snapshots that are array-based and more importantly what happens while they are active is reversed. When a snapshot of a VM on VVol-based storage is initiated in vSphere a delta VVol is created for each virtual disk that a VM has but the original disk remains Read-Write and instead the delta VVols contain any disk blocks that were changed while the snapshot is running. The delta VVols are all Read-Only as they are simply storing changed disk blocks while the original disk remains Read-Write as illustrated in the short video below.

Now the big change occurs when we delete a snapshot, with VVols because the original disk is Read-Write, we can simply discard the delta VVols and there is no data to commit back into the original disk. This process can take milliseconds compared to minutes or hours that is needed to commit a snapshot on VMFS datastores. How does this impact your backups? Because we have to take a VM snapshot of a VM, the backup application no longer has to sit around waiting at the end of the backup for any changes to commit while the snapshot is deleted. Depending on the size of your VM and how much change that occurs within the VM while the backup is running with VVols this can reduce your backup times from seconds to minutes or more per VM, multiply this times dozens or hundreds of VMs and you can really reduce your backup window by a good amount of time.

To validate this Symantec has done some testing by doing some benchmarking that compares a group of VMs being backed up on a VMFS datastore versus the same VMs being backed up on a VVol Storage Container. The following information is a summary of their results from the VMworld session that they presented on this topic (STO5844 – Benchmark Testing: Making Backups Better Than Ever Using Virtual Volumes).

Their environment consisted of NetBackup 7.7 with a 3PAR 7200c storage array that had 24 1.2TB 10K disks. They did a comparison using 60 VMs with 100GB virtual disks and 40 of them powered on. They did simulate a 10% data change rate inside the VM while the backup is running and they first tested with VMFS and then wiped out the array and configured it for VVols. Their testing focused on the amount of time it took to create VM snapshots when the backups are started and the time it took to delete and consolidate them when the backup is finished.

From their testing they found that overall backup times were reduced by around 30% as seen below on the slides from their VMworld session. They found out that snapshot creation time took a few seconds longer with a VVol-based snapshot, but the snapshot deletion time was dramatically reduced. They tested this using different numbers of simultaneously running backups with consistent results. They also found that snapshot errors that sometimes occur during the delete process were virtually eliminated. The net effect of this much improved snapshot mechanism with VVols can amount to a much more efficient and shorter backup operation.

Source: Symantec, VMworld 2015 session ID STO5844

Looking beyond backups the new VVol-based snapshot mechanism will be a great time and resource saver in any vSphere environment. Of all the VM snapshots that we take for whatever reason, how many do we actually use to revert back to a point in time, very few I would say. Typically we are creating VM snapshots for insurance purposes and never really end up using them.  Not having that long resource intensive commit process running on your ESXi host as well as the extra resource consumption required to maintain snapshots on VMFS means less burden on the host and more resources for your VM workloads. The storage array is much better equipped to do snapshots and the shift to move them off the host and to the storage array with VVols is a great benefit not just for backups but also for any use case that you might use snapshots for in your vSphere environment.

VMware has just released an incremental update to vSphere (vCenter Server and ESXi) which is 6.0 Update 1 as well as updates to vSphere Replication (6.1), Data Protection (6.1), Site Recovery Manager (6.1) and  vRealize Orchestrator Appliance (6.0.3). I don’t know why they are versioning everything else as 6.1 and vCenter Server and ESXi as 6.0 U1. They have been referring to the new VSAN version as 6.1 so it would be logical if ESXi and vCenter Server were 6.1 as well, now it looks like they are calling it VSAN 6.0.1

This may look like a minor and incremental upgrade which it mostly is but their are some big new features in VSAN 6.1 which they don’t do it justice in the release notes, read all about what’s new in VSAN 6.1 here. Almost all the product updates in this release center around the new VSAN 6.1 version which is included in it. There are some big updates in SRM with support for Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) and stretched clusters and vSphere Replication also has a new and improved 5 minute RPO replication with VSAN. The other big thing is support for VAIO in ESXi, I don’t see a lot of vendors integrating with this new APIs yet but I know there are some that are working on it such as Infinio and SanDisk (design partner).

• ESXi 6.0U1: Release Notes -=- Download Page
• vCenter Server 6.0U1: Release Notes -=- Download Page
• Site Recovery Manager 6.1:  Releases Notes -=- Download Page
• vSphere Replication 6.1: Release Notes -=- Download Page
• vSphere Data Protection 6.1: Release Notes -=- Download Page
• vRealize Orchestrator Appliance 6.0.3: Release Notes -=- Download Page

This release of VMware ESXi contains the following enhancements:

• I/O Filter: vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) provide a framework that allows third parties to create software components called I/O filters. The filters can be installed on ESXi hosts and can offer additional data services to virtual machines by processing I/O requests that move between the guest operating system of a virtual machine and virtual disks.
• Exclusive affinity to additional system contexts associated with a low-latency VM: This release introduces a new VMX option sched.cpu.latencySensitivity.sysContexts to address issues on vSphere 6.0 where most system contexts are still worldlets. The Scheduler utilizes the sched.cpu.latencySensitivity.sysContexts option for each virtual machine to automatically identify a set of system contexts that might be involved in the latency-sensitive workloads. For each of these system contexts, exclusive affinity to one dedicated physical core is provided. The VMX option sched.cpu.latencySensitivity.sysContexts denotes how many exclusive cores a low-latency VM can get for the system contexts.
• ESXi Authentication for Active Directory:ESXi is modified to only support AES256-CTS/AES128-CTS/RC4-HMAC encryption for Kerberos communication between ESXi and Active Directory.
• Support for SSLv3: Support for SSLv3 has been disabled by default. For further details, see Knowledge Base article 2121021.
• Stretched Clusters: Virtual SAN 6.0 Update 1 supports stretched clusters that span geographic locations to protect data from site failures or loss of network connection.

This release of VMware vCenter Server contains the following enhancements:

• Customer Experience Improvement Program: The Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) provides VMware with information that enables VMware to improve the VMware products and services and to fix problems. When you choose to participate in CEIP, VMware will collect technical information listed below about your use of the VMware products and services in CEIP reports on a regular basis. This information does not personally identify you. For more details, see the vSphere Documentation Center.
• Feature Enhancement: Suite UI is now enabled by default for the vSphere Web Client.
• Support for SSLv3: Support for SSLv3 has been disabled by default.
• vCSA Authentication for Active Directory: VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (vCSA) has been modified to only support AES256-CTS/AES128-CTS/RC4-HMAC encryption for Kerberos authentication between vCSA and Active Directory.
• Installation and Upgrade using HTML 5 installer: The following installation and upgrade scenarios are supported for vCenter Server using HTML 5 installer:
  • Installation using HTML 5 installer and target as vCenter Server is supported
  • Upgrade using HTML 5 installer and target as vCenter Server is not supported
  • Upgrade using command line and target as vCenter Server is supported
• Resolved Issues: This release of vCenter Server 6.0 Update 1 addresses issues that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1 provides the following new features:

• Support for VMware vSphere 6.0 update 1.
• Storage policy based protection of virtual machines.
• Support for stretched storage when using storage policy protection groups in enhanced linked mode.
• Support for auto-mapping of stretched NSX networks.
• Enhancements to mappings for test networks.

VMware vSphere Replication 6.1 provides the following new features:

• 5 minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for replication between Virtual SAN data stores – This version of vSphere Replication allows customers to replicate virtual machine workloads with an RPO setting as low as 5 minutes between Virtual SAN data stores.
• Support for NFS v 4.1 – This release introduces support for NFS v 4.1 data stores. It allows customers to protect and recover virtual machines that are provisioned onto NFS v 4.1 environments using vSphere Replication.
• UI Enhancements – the RPO settings in the Configure Replication wizard are simplified and provide more granular options of predefined RPO settings.

Well that’s a wrap, another VMworld in the books, this is number 8 for me and how fast the event flies by never changes for me. It always seems like you wish you could of done and seen more there and that there was so much you missed out on but as there is so much going on it’s impossible to take in everything. For me I know there were some friends and acquaintances that I missed out on seeing which is always a priority for me as you usually only get to see them once a year. All in all though it was a good event for me but I will always regret not having been able to done more.

Location, location, location…

Let’s start off with the event location, while San Francisco is a nice enough town to visit, it’s not an ideal conference destination. VMworld has gotten so big it’s spread out across several blocks and I frequently had to walk from Moscone North to South to West to the Marriott. All that walking wears you down and wastes time that you could of been doing more with. The crazy expensive hotel room gouging situation is ridiculous, paying double or triple for a room that is half as nice as a Venetian room. I paid about $550/night for a room at the Marriott that is now going for $279/night this week. Then there’s the whole street people thing that you have to constantly walk through that can wear on you as well.

Well thankfully we get a change of venue as VMworld goes to Las Vegas in 2016 as the Moscone Center is under renovation next year. VMworld has been in San Fran in 2007, 2009-2010 and 2012-2015, it was in Vegas in 2005, 2008 and 2011 (2004 was San Diego and 2006 was Los Angeles). VMware was under contract to hold VMworld at Moscone until next year but now it looks like they are free to go anywhere and as a result you might see it in Vegas for a few years (heard that from someone at VMware). VMworld 2016 will be held at the Mandalay Bay resort from Aug. 28th-Sept 1st 2016, I’m guessing the Venetian where it usually was might have been unavailable that week. The pre-registration page is up already fro VMworld 2016 so you can be notified when it goes live. VMworld Europe 2016 is still being held in Barcelona, Spain. It might be a refreshing change to see VMworld somewhere else in the US other than Vegas or San Fran one of these years such as Chicago or Orlando.

How many people attended VMworld?

VMware claims record attendance of over 23,000 people this year which would top the previous high attendance of 22,500 in 2013. That was announced at the keynote, I haven’t seen VMware publish any attendance numbers anywhere. VMworld 2014 was “over 22,000” which probably puts it between 22,000-22,499. Since they didn’t say over 23,500 I’m guessing the attendance number for this year is under that. That’s good for VMware that the number is higher and I expect the number to stay right around there in coming years. Of that 23,000+ VMware doesn’t publish the mix of VMware employees, partners, sponsors and actual attendees. A week before the event the attendance report I saw had about 12,000 people in it so I’m curious as to what the mix is, I’m guessing that there are at least 5,000 VMware employee and sponsors in that number if not more.

What was announced?

The announcements made at VMworld were few and not all that exciting as the event did not align with a major new release of vSphere. VMware slapped a new name on EVO:Rack which was announced last VMworld and is now calling it EVO SDDC which is a bundle of compute (ESXi), storage (VSAN), networking (NSX) and management (vRealize Ops) at rack scale. But it still isn’t a shipping product and won’t be a for a while (1st half 2016). The new release of VSAN was announced, it’s an incremental update to VSAN 6.1 and will be available later this month, you can read all about what’s new in VSAN 6.1 here. VMware hasn’t announced a new vSphere version to support VSAN 6.1 but as it’s built into the hypervisor I’m betting you will see vSphere 6.1 released later this month.

VMware also made announcements around hybrid cloud with new vCloud Air Disaster Recovery Services which is basically just SRM running in a public cloud (of course they called it SRM Air). They also announced new vCloud Air Object Storage and vCloud Air SQL. It’s no secret that VMware has a big focus on containers and they announced as a technology preview both vSphere Integrated Containers and the Photon Platform. You’ve probably heard about Photon already but vSphere Integrated Containers is a new announcement that brings together several cloud-native technologies including Project Bonneville (container security and isolation), Project Photon OS (formerly Project Photon), and VMware’s Instant Clone technology (a feature of VMware vSphere 6) that will bring together the best of VMware vSphere with containers.

Finally on the EUC side they announced some new stuff for universal application delivery and device management which is based on their new tech preview called Project A2 that integrates application delivery into Windows 10 through AirWatch and App Volumes. Read all about it here.

How were the Sessions?

I didn’t attend many as there are so many other things to see and do at VMworld and the sessions are all recorded anyway to watch later. I went to one on VAIO but the VMware speaker was obviously reading from a script which kind of killed the session for me so I left. The other was the Graybeard’s on Storage panel but it turned into a VVol bashing session so I didn’t stay long. I was a speaker at 4 sessions, 2 of them were our HP sponsor sessions, 1 was VMware’s VVol technical panel and the last was my Top 10 Things You MUST Know Before Implementing VVols session. The technical panel went pretty well, it was narrated by Ken Werneberg from VMware, we had about 175 people in the room. My VVols session was on Thursday morning, I had to extend my stay a day but it was worth it. I had 560 people registered for it and 279 people in the room.

If you didn’t make VMworld you can still view some of the sessions that VMware recorded and released to the general public. Also check out these other resources as well.

How was the food?

I’m 100% confident that number is going to VMworld for the food, the lunches that are served throughout the conference continue to be bland and terrible. They improved the packaging of the box lunches this year which is like putting a fancy wrapper on a turd. I decided to be brave and try one as I was in a hurry and took a bite or two and tossed it as it just wasn’t tasty. Let’s face it the Moscone Center isn’t a hotel or a restaurant and the food they serve is no comparison to other VMworld’s that were at Vegas hotels that are equipped for cooking good food.

How were the General Sessions?

I really didn’t find them all that interesting, they had some good moments but overall weren’t all that exciting. As there were not alot of really big announcements it seemed like they had to really work to fill the time. They did show off a vMotion to a public cloud that was pretty slick but all an all I was a bit bored watching them. VMware did a great job live streaming them so you could watch them anywhere. If you remember back to the old days of Paul Maritz and Steve Herrod the keynotes were just a lot more exciting and you really wanted to not miss them. Here’s a flash back to the Steve Herrod day 2 keynote in 2012 and also the day 1 keynote with the CEO swap from Paul to Pat. Remember this:

What about the Solutions Exchange?

The Solutions Exchange is were many attendees spend a lot of time taking in the entire VMware partner ecosystem which continues to grow and grow. It seemed more dense this year as if there were more vendors in there and felt a bit more crowded. A lot of small vendors were going big there in an attempt to get the attention of attendees and I’d say at least a third of the partners were storage related. I spent a good amount of time there and there seemed to be good and steady traffic through the floor which is good for the partners that put a big investment into the event.

Thanks to the vendors that support the vExpert program

There were probably a dozen vendors there that had special gifts for those that are chosen as vExperts. It’s good to see these vendors recognize the value of the vExpert community and do something special to reward those who give back and evangelize about VMware and virtualization. As the vExpert population has grown quite large these days (1,200) I’m sure it’s more of a financial and logistic burden to do this so I wish to thank those vendors that did it which includes Cohesity, Coho Data, Simplivity, Datrium, Catalogic Software, SolidFire, Tegile and DataGravity.

How were the Parties?

After VMworld is over each day there are no shortage of parties to attend so you can relax and chat with other attendees after a busy day. I went to the VMunderground party on Sunday which was really good, they had a big venue at the Metreon again and you didn’t have to deal with tickets this year to get in, thank you to all the vendors that sponsor it. The always epic Veeam party was also at the Metreon this year and was a lot of fun as they had a band playing and people got very creative and playful with the glow rings that they were passing out which reminded me of the VMworld 2008 party at the Vegas Speedway.

I also attended the vExpert party which was in a fancy historic ballroom, they tried to do something different by assaulting us with PowerPoint for the first hour which wasn’t all that well received as much of it was around marketing strategies. I actually prefer the more informal gatherings that allowed you to socialize more with vExperts and special guests like Pat Gelsinger. I do appreciate the efforts that they put into having an event for vExperts at VMworld and hope they continue that tradition. Speaking of Pat, I did get my 3rd annual picture with him and he told a neat story about his days at Intel when he ran into Mendel at a conference the day they figured out how to get vMotion to work.

The official VMworld party I passed on as it was at AT&T Park and I didn’t want to go that far away and the bands were mediocre again this year. I still hold out hope that VMware will get a decent big name band to play at VMworld in the coming years.

A few pics from the event

Pat Gelsinger and I at the vExpert Party:

Simon, David & I after recording a vChat episode at VMworld:

My VVol session starts to fill up:

Last week I wrote about how you could get value out of VMworld even if you did not attend it. One of the things I mentioned is that VMware typically releases some of the most popular sessions (as well other sessions that they want to promote) to the general public shortly after VMworld. Well VMware has done just that and released the sessions below onto YouTube. VMware usually releases these in batches so keep checking back as they may publish more of them later on which I will add to this page. For the rest of them that they don’t post you’ll have to get a VMUG Advantage membership or a VMworld session subscription to view them.

UPDATE: VMware released another batch of 28 sessions that I have added to the list below…

General Sessions

General Session – Monday, August 31, 2015 (Carl Eschenbach, VMware – Bill Fathers, VMware – Raghu Raghuram – VMware, Ray O’Farrell, VMware)
General Session – Tuesday, September 1, 2015 (Sanjay Poonen, VMware – Martin Casado, VMware – Pat Gelsinger, VMware)

Cloud Native Apps Track

CNA4590 Container Orchestration with the SDDC (Aaron Blasius, VMware)
CNA6649-S Build and run Cloud Native Apps in your Software Defined Data Center (Kit Colbert, VMware)
CNA5860 – Containers without Compromise – Persistent Storage for Docker Containers with VMware (Vivek Saraswat, VMware) New!

CTO Track

CTO6689-S – Closing the Loop: Towards a World of Software Defined Decision Making (Paul Strong, VMware)
CTO6453 – The Future of Software Defined Storage – What Does It Look Like in 3 Years Time (Richard McDougall, VMware) New!

End User Computing Track

EUC4630 – Managing Users A Deep Dive Into VMware User Environment Manager (Michael Bradley, VMware – Dale Carter, VMware)
EUC5404 – Deliver High Performance Desktops with VMware Horizon and NVIDIA GRID vGPU (Pat Lee, VMware – Luke Wignall, NVIDIA)
EUC5020 – The “Snappy” Virtual Desktop User Experience (Aivars Apsite, Metro Health)
EUC6807-S – The Future of End User Computing (Erik Frieberg, VMware – Shankar Iyar, VMware – Noah Wasmer, VMware – Harry Labana, VMware)
EUC4827 – VDI Sizing Deep Dive – The Horizon Sizing Tool (Ray Heffer, VMware – Shengbo Teng, VMware) New!
EUC4879 – Horizon View Storage – Let’s Dive Deep! (Tristan Todd, VMware – Michael Cooney, EMC – Jim Yanik, VMware) New!
EUC5052 – Beyond the Marketing – Horizon 6 Technical Deep Dive (Ray Heffer, VMware – Jim Yanik, VMware) New!
EUC4437 – Horizon View Troubleshooting – Looking Under the Hood (Jack McMichael, VMware – Matt Coppinger, VMware) New!

Hybrid Cloud

HBC4849 – vCloud Air 2015 – Getting Started with Hybrid Cloud (Greg Herzog, VMware)
HBC6629-S – No App is an Island (Ajay Patel, VMware)

Infrastructure Track

INF5211 – Automating Everything VMware with PowerCLI – Deep Dive (Alan Renouf, VMware – Luc Dekens, Eurocontrol)
INF4528 – vCenter Server Appliance VCSA Best Practices & Tips Tricks (William Lam, VMware)
INF4586 – Take Virtualization to the Next Level vSphere with Operations Management (Martin Yip, VMware – Himanshu Singh, VMware)
INF5975 – vCenter Server Appliance as First Choice VC (Madhup Gulati, VMware – Mikael Jenson, Herring Kommune)
INF4764 – Extreme Performance Series – vCenter Performance Best Practices (Ravi Soundararajan, VMware) New!
INF4793 – Day-to-Day Automation of VMware Products to Increase Productivity and Efficiency (Brian Graf, VMware) New!
INF5093 – vSphere Web Client – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Yavor Boychev, VMware – Dennis Lu, VMware) New!
INF5060 – What’s New in vSphere (Michael Adams, VMware) New!
INF4944 – Managing vSphere 6 Deployments and Upgrades, Part 1 (Dilpreet Bindra, VMware – Mohan Potheri, VMware) New!
INF5123 – Managing vSphere 6 Deployments and Upgrades, Part 2 (Brian Graf, VMware – Salil Suri, VMware) New!
INF4529 – VMware Certificate Management for Mere Mortals (Ryan Johnson, VMware – Adam Eckerle, VMware) New!
INF4712 – Just Because You COULD, Doesn’t Mean You SHOULD – vSphere 6 Architecture Considerations from Real World Experiences (Jonathan McDonald, VMware) New!
INF4945 – vCenter Server 6 High Availability (Madhup Gulati, VMware – Mohan Potheri, VMware) New!
INF5701 – Extreme Performance Series – vSphere Compute & Memory (Fei Guo, VMware – Seong Beom Kim, VMware) New!

Management Track

MGT5245 – vRealize Operations Insight Manage vSphere and Your Entire Data Center…All in One Place! (Himanshu Singh, VMware – Hicham Mourad, VMware)
MGT5360 – Introducing Application Self service with Networking and Security (Andrew Voltmer, VMware – Becky Smith, VMware)
MGT6623-S The VMware Cloud Management Platform Drill Down and Outlook (Ajay Singh, VMware – Dave Bartoletti, Forrester – Seth Frohlich, CIT – Tim Garza, CNRA – Jon Herlocker, VMware)
MGT4928 – How To Troubleshoot Using vRealize Operations Manager – Live Demo (Shyamal Patal, VMware – Samuel McBride – VMware)

Networking Track

NET6639-S – The Next Horizon for Cloud Networking and Security (Guido Appenzeller, VMware)
NET5560 VMware NSX Deep Dive (Jacob Rapp, VMware)
NET4976 – vSphere Distributed Switch 6 –Technical Deep Dive (Chris Wahl, Rubrik – Jason Nash, Sirius) New!
NET4989 – The Future of Network Virtualization with VMware NSX (Bruce Davie, VMware) New!

Operations Transformations Track

OPT6851-S A conversation with the VMware CIO Suggestions on being an IT Leader (Bask Iyer, VMware)

Security Track

SEC6640-S – The Software Defined Data Center: Security for the new battlefield (Tom Corn, VMware)

Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) Track

SDDC5273-S – VMware Hyper Converged Infrastructure From vSAN to EVO RAIL and EVO RACK (Raj Yavatkar, VMware)
SDDC6254-S The Best SDDC! (Dale Ferrario, VMware – Dharminder Debisarun, Novamedia – Simon Delord, Telstra – David Giambruno, Tribune Media – Tony Morshed, CA DOWR)

Storage Track

STO4572 Conducting a Successful Virtual SAN Proof of Concept (Cormac Hogan, VMware – Julienne Pham, VMware)
STO5887 Building a Business Case for Virtual SAN (Madelyn Grunewald, VMware – Jordan Glamann, Dominos Pizza – Rafael Kabesa, VMware)
STO5954 S Rethinking Enterprise Storage The Rise Of Hyper converged Infrastructure (Charles Fan, VMware – Mike Feld, BayState Health)
STO6085 Site Recovery Manager Technical Walk through (GS Khalsa, VMware – Jeff Hunter, VMware)
STO4649 – Virtual Volumes Technical Deep Dive (Ken Werneburg, VMware – Patrick Dirks, VMware) New!
STO4474 – Networking Virtual SAN’s Backbone (Bhumik Patel, VMware – John Kennedy, Cisco) New!
STO5888 – Top 10 Thing You MUST Know Before Implementing Virtual Volumes (Eric Siebert, HP) New!
STO5074 – Explaining Advanced Virtual Volumes Configurations (Ken Werneburg, VMware – Andy Banta, SolidFire) New!
STO6137 – Site Recovery Manager and Policy Based DR Deep Dive with Engineering (GS Khalsa, VMware – Aleksey Pershin, VMware) New!

Virtualizing Applications Track

VAPP6257 – Troubleshooting for vSphere 6 (Jamie Rawson, VMware) New!
VAPP5598 – Advanced SQL Server on vSphere (Scott Salyer, VMware – Wanda He, EMC) New!
VAPP5483 – Virtualize Active Directory, the Right Way! (Deji Akomolafe, VMware – Matt Liebowitz, EMC) New!
VAPP5719 – Monitoring and Managing Applications with vRealize Operations 6.1 and vSphere 6 (Jeff Godfrey, VMware – Ben Todd, VMware) New!

VMware has revealed the next version of Virtual SAN (VSAN), 6.1 at VMworld US 2015. This incremental upgrade from the current 6.0 version that was announced back in Feb. may seem small compared to the last update but their are a few big things in it that I wanted to highlight.

Who’s using VSAN today?

The first thing I wanted to point out from VMware’s marketing slide for VSAN is the fact that they claim 2,000+ customers. That seems like a pretty small amount which is around the typical range that a 1-2 year old startup might expect to have. But given the fact that VMware is not a startup, they have been marketing the hell out of VSAN which has been available now for over a year and a half and it’s built into vSphere that number seems pretty low.

I can think of at least 2 reasons for the low number, the first is cost, VSAN is still pretty expensive to license and when you start adding up the storage and license costs for each host you’re near the ballpark of a physical SAN. The second is what I call the comfort blanket, people get attached to what they currently use (physical SAN) and are very reluctant to change it despite all the promises of wonderful things that something else might bring. As a result they tend to stick to what they know and what they are comfortable with instead of venturing outside that comfort zone into unfamiliar territory.

What’s New in Virtual SAN 6.1?

If you want the quick overview of everything new in 6.1 the below slide illustrates that. The big things that stand out are support for Stretched Storage Clusters (i.e. vMSC), support for 2 node VSAN clusters, support for multi-vCPU (SMP) Fault Tolerance, vRealize Ops integration and new enhanced replication with lower RPO’s. Continue reading for more details on all these.

Stretched Clustering

Prior to version 6.1 you were limited to deploying a VSAN cluster to a single site as it did not support higher latency between VSAN nodes. Now with support for stretched clusters you can spread your VSAN nodes farther apart to provide a higher level of storage availability that can survive not just a single node failure but also a site failure. This is very similar to a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) solution, the difference being that vMSC is intended for external storage arrays and this solution is built into vSphere hence no need for it to be vMSC certified. Just like vMSC however this is intended for metro distances only as it is limited by latency (5ms).

The VSAN Stretch Cluster solution is available in either VSAN configuration (hybrid or all-flash) and utilizes synchronous replication between sites to keep all nodes continually in sync. It is also based on an active-active architecture so storage is usable at either site. As with just about any multi-site storage solution a 3rd party quorum is required for quorum and decision making to resolve split brain situations when a site failure occurs. The witness can be deployed as a virtual appliance at a 3rd site or hosted in the cloud via vCloud Air. As the 3rd site option is often not available for many companies who only have 2 sites the vCloud Air option is a nice alternative.

As mentioned the requirements for this solution is the two sites must have less than 5ms latency between them, this is pretty much standard for any type of synchronous replication solution as the storage at the two sites must stay synchronized at all times and higher latency between sites can impact performance. The requirement for the connection to the 3rd site witness appliance is 100Mbps but realistically as there is not heavy data flow between the witness and storage sites it can probably be much lower. The requirement for the connection between the 2 storage sites is 10Gbps which is pretty high and is the primary reason why this solution is metro distance limited. Note because this is an active-active solution both DRS & HA are supported between sites.

While having continuous availability is critical to some customers there is often the need to extend that out further to protect against regional disasters. You can combine a VSAN stretch cluster with VMware’s vCloud Air Disaster Recovery Solution that utilizes vSphere Replication (asynchronous) to replicate your VSAN stretch cluster to a cloud based failover environment. This provides you with double protection against either a single site failover or a regional event that might impact both your stretched cluster sites.

In addition to replication to a vCloud Air based DR cloud there is also enhanced replication to an offsite location using vSphere Replication with Site Recovery Manager. This improved replication is more efficient due to the new VSAN vsanSparse snapshot mechanism that was introduced in vSphere 6.0 and VMware is claiming that RPO’s as low as 5 minutes can be achieved as a result.

SMP-Fault Tolerance

I don’t know that many people use the vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT) feature that much due to the many limitations and restrictions that it puts on VMs. Support for multi vCPU (SMP) VM’s was finally introduced in vSphere 6.0 but VSAN was not supported with Fault Tolerance (even single CPU VM’s). Now with 6.1 you can use the FT feature with VSAN if you so desire including SMP VM’s.

Support for Application Clustering Technologies

VSAN now supports certain application specific clustering technologies including Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC), Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server. Note for Exchange and SQL the only supported configurations are those that use the file share quorum witness, Failover Cluster Instances (FCI) are not supported..

2-Node ROBO Solution

While VMware has worked to scale VSAN on the high end up to 64 nodes the minimum supported nodes has remained at 3 nodes until now. VSAN now supports a 2-node cluster but this is only meant for a ROBO solution as it does require a witness node in the same manner as a stretched cluster does which is deployed at a central location and managed by vCenter Server. With this solution each node will be in a Fault Domain and each ROBO cluster will have it’s own independent witness node with all management done by a single vCenter Server instance. This is great for ROBO deployments that have many sites where companies desire to keep as little infrastructure as possible at each site. This solution is not intended for standalone 2-node deployments where the minimum nodes remains at 3 nodes.

Virtual SAN Management Pack for vRealize Operations

Virtual SAN now has integration with vRealize Operations (vROps) for enhanced health, performance and capacity monitoring. The integration isn’t native to vROps and SAN integrates the same way that every vendor does through a Management Pack that is installed in vROps that provides support for VSAN. This provides some much needed better monitoring for VSAN and includes a Global View that provides visibility across multiple VSAN clusters for monitoring, alerts and notifications as well as capacity monitoring that can monitor disk usage and SSD wear out across all VSAN hosts and use advanced capacity planning based on “what if” scenarios, historic demand and stress trends. In addition the health monitoring provides proactively notifications on failures, performance or policy compliance issues on an ongoing basis, with root-cause analysis and remediation strategy.

Some additional new things

Some additional smaller things included in VSAN 6.1 include support for new higher performance flash devices such as SanDisk’s UltraDIMMs that supports NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) which is a specification that allows SSDs to connect to the PCIe bus instead of through traditional SAS/SATA interfaces. By using the PCIe bus it allows for much lower latency and support for multiple queues and higher queue depths, the end result improves performance and helps eliminates bottlenecks.

VSAN 6.1 also allows for non-destructive file system upgrades from previous versions of VSAN which makes upgrading much easier.

VSAN 6.1 also makes it easier to claim disks into a VSAN node by allowing you to choose many simultaneously instead of choosing them one by one.

Finally health reporting has been improved with new information, configuration options and support for stretched clusters.

If you’re a Top vBlogger going to VMworld this year what better way to tell the world that you’re a Top vBlogger by wearing your commemorative coin bling. Don’t have one yet? There were at least 15 people that never filled out the shipping form so if you don’t have one and will be at VMworld (US) come find me (tweet me) and I’ll meet up with you to make sure you get one.