1. Simple set-up and vCenter-integrated management.

vSAN offers an outstanding storage solution with integrated security, simple administration, high performance, and low costs. vSAN consolidates local storage devices to create distributed and partitioned data storage and provide software-defined storage that’s optimised for virtual machines.

vSAN is the only native vSphere storage that can be expanded seamlessly and without additional software.

Storage provisioning and management is easily configured, optimised, and controlled with policies via the central management interface.

2. Reduced total cost of ownership.

vSAN can drastically reduce your costs as a result of hardware selection, server efficiency in terms of storage arrays and affordable flash storage. Admin work becomes easier with less work and intelligent automation that can be managed via a tool and a holistic team. And you’ll be able to react more quickly and intelligently to business requirements. New, enhanced stretched clusters offer protection across multiple locations for significantly lower costs than traditional solutions.

3. Scalability for any requirements.

By adding disks to existing nodes or adding multiple nodes into the cluster, a vSAN solution can grow very easily and simply. In combination with NSX, local storage and admin services can be simplified with many different public clouds, ensuring a consistent user experience.

Customers from all industries and sizes rely on vSAN to operate their most important applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, SAP and Oracle Database.

Performance

Using Cache Drives with solid state disks and the option of all-flash configuration makes low latencies and performance that meet the requirements of virtually all applications possible. This means up to 100k IOPS per host with latencies under 1ms.

Reliability

Using between 3 and 64 hosts and the option to use multiple disk groups per host means there is no single point of failure. Policies allow a different service level to be defined for each object and ensure than that can be increased where necessary, allowing for an availability of up to 99.9999%.

4. Flexibility in the choice of deployment architecture.

VMware vSAN enables simple 3-node clusters be realised for operation of a mixed environment as well as highly-available, specialised clusters with up to 64 nodes for dedicated use.

vSAN Stretched Cluster with Local Failure Protection

The stretched-cluster function offers the option to make all resources across two locations redundant. In a stretched cluster configuration, both data locations are active and if one of the locations fails, vSAN uses the storage of the other location. vSphere HA then starts the failed VMs afresh in the remaining location.

vSAN Remote Office / Branch Office (ROBO)

Another option with vSAN is to provision a 2-host architecture for remote office implementations. A 2-node architecture consists of two physical vSphere hosts in a cluster in the same building that vSAN is run in. The two physical hosts can be connected via a switch or directly with a crossover cable.

Licensing

vSAN licence editions include Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise. Additionally, there are licences for vSAN for ROBO and vSAN for VDI—both come in Standard, Advanced and Enterprise Editions. Functionally, the ROBO and VDI licence models work the same as the standard model, but licensing takes place according to other criteria.

vSAN for ROBO licences is calculated per virtual machine and sold in packs of 25. This approach provides high flexibility in provisioning and helps minimise the costs for smaller infrastructures that would normally be found in branches.

“vSAN for Desktop” licensing is available for customers that use vSAN exclusively for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Because of the various licensing types, (user vs CPU), use of vSAN is limited to exclusively VDI workloads, but does offer unique price and package options that further reduce VDI costs and boast both the benefits and performance of a distributed storage platform.

Cloud Foundation

vSAN can also be purchased as part of the VMware Cloud Foundation together with vSphere, NSX and vRealize. Cloud Foundation is a fully-integrated Software Stack that bundles compute, storage and network virtualisation into a single platform and that can be provisioned as a private cloud on-site or as a service in a public cloud. The Cloud Foundation helps to break down traditional administrative silos into data centres and merge computing power, storage, network, and cloud management, enabling comprehensive support for application deployment.