This new version part of the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 update, delivers on this with several powerful new features.
VMware vSAN 9.0 has been redesigned to be more flexible and powerful for your most important work, and it’s also cheaper. It includes a new feature that reduces how much storage you need, which lowers costs. Plus, it has new ways to copy virtual machines, making it easier to recover from a disaster.
New features in VMware vSAN 9.0
The latest update of VMware vSAN 9.0, introduces a host of features designed to dramatically boost performance, efficiency, and data protection for modern private cloud environments.
Global deduplication
This is the major new feature for vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA). With VMware vSAN 9.0 ESA, data deduplication is no longer limited to a single disk. The new global deduplication feature works across the entire cluster, significantly boosting storage efficiency and lowering costs.
This process is handled post-write, meaning it happens after data is initially written to the disks. This approach prevents performance slowdowns during data writes, ensuring you maintain fast performance while still benefiting from substantial storage savings by eliminating duplicate data throughout your cluster (picture from VMware).
Native vSAN-to-vSAN replication
With version 9.0. third-party replication tools are no longer required. VMware vSAN 9.0 now has native data protection workflows that let you replicate VMs between clusters.
This feature, which uses vSAN ESA’s snapshot technology, offers a low RPO of just one minute and can handle a large number of snapshots (up to 200) without impacting performance (picture from VMware).
Network separation for storage clusters
Designed for the architecture previously known as vSAN Max, this new capability gives you the flexibility to separate network traffic for clients and servers. This can boost storage cluster performance by up to 25%.
You can use a high-speed network for traffic within a rack and a different network for traffic to other clusters (picture from VMware).
Enhanced stretched cluster functionality
VMware vSAN 9.0 makes managing high-availability stretched clusters much easier. The new Site Maintenance Mode lets you put an entire site into maintenance with a single click, which is a massive time-saver.
There’s also a new Manual Take Over feature, a last-resort tool for data recovery if a site that was already in maintenance mode is lost (picture from VMware).
Increased file services limits
If file shares are used with vSAN, the new version doubles the limit of file shares per cluster from 250 to 500.
This is a great improvement for containerized environments that need a high density of SMB and NFS shares.
Unified storage dashboard
Inside the VCF 9.0 environment, a new unified dashboard gives you a centralized view of all your storage, including vSAN, SAN, and NAS.
This dashboard provides real-time insights into the health, performance, and utilization of your storage, making troubleshooting and management much simpler (picture from VMware).
Importing existing vSAN environments
With version 9.0 you can now import your existing vSAN environments, including HCI, stretched clusters, and 2-node configurations, into the VCF platform.
This allows you to bring your existing private cloud under the centralized management of VCF without a complete rebuilding.
Wrap up
Version 9.0 simplifies vSAN management and adds new features to meet requirements that were difficult to achieve before. The new capabilities also help keep costs under control by optimizing performance and storage efficiency
These new VMware vSAN 9.0 updates create a more powerful and flexible solution, ready for everything from modern applications to large-scale private cloud deployments.
- Design