Review: VMware VSAN turns storage inside-out

To compare my two clusters, I ran two different I/O Analyzer workloads to measure high write performance and a mixture of reads and writes. The Max IOPS test used a 512KB block size for 100 percent sequential read, while the combo test used 4KB blocks and a mix of 70 percent reads and 30 percent writes. The results of the two tests tell two different stories. Whereas the three-node cluster held its own against the four-node cluster in the Max IOPS test (roughly 154K vs. 190K maximum total IOPS), the four-node cluster proved vastly superior (yielding roughly double the performance) in the mixed workload test. The results of the mixed workload test are presented in the chart below. 

具有更多RAM，更多CPU，较大的SSD和10GBE网络，三个节点Supermicro群集多增加了三个节点Lenovo群集的读写性能。

The single most important factor in VSAN performance will be the size of the SSD cache. If the data your workload requires is not found in the flash cache, but must be accessed from rotating disk, then I/O latency will shoot up and IOPS will fall dramatically.

Note that the results for the mixed workload test shown above make use of 4GB target virtual machine disks, which (when multiplied by eight I/O Analyzer workers per node) did not exceed the SSD cache size in either cluster (100GB SSD in the Lenovo nodes, 400GB SSD in the Supermicro nodes). When I ran the same benchmark using 15GB target disks for the Lenovo cluster and 50GB target disks for the Supermicro cluster (exceeding the SSD cache size on all cluster nodes) IOPS plummeted on both clusters.

简而言之，在配置VSAN群集硬件时，绝对确定在每个节点中包含足够的闪光以超过工作数据集的大小。当然，更多的RAM和10GBE网络很好。VMware建议大多数部署方案10GBE。毕竟，过去几年成本大幅下降，10GBE在1Gbe上的性能显着提高。

Think global, store localVMware's Virtual SAN represents a significant step toward the stated goal of a software-defined data center. It's also somewhat of a "back to the future" experience, with storage moving into the local host machines and away from a centralized and dedicated storage appliance. My testing shows that VSAN is capable of delivering respectable performance on moderately priced hardware. Throw in 10GbE networking and you'll see impressive results on even the lowest-end hardware configuration.

Once you get past the initial disk configuration, the installation process is no different than any other VMware setup. Configuring and managing VSAN should be relatively painless for most customers. That said, VSAN is a 1.0 release: Those who need to tweak the settings may have to do some digging, reading, and testing to get what they want. The vCenter tools and the VSAN Observer offer deep insight into what's happening inside the kernel to help diagnose any significant issues. VSAN supports up to 32 nodes and 35 disks per node. If you do the math, you'll find that scales out to a whopping 4.4 petabytes of storage with current disk technology.

VSAN的已发布费用为每CPU的2,495美元，这为高端超级群集的大约20,000美元。对于联想集群，VSAN的价格为14,970美元或大约两倍于硬件的价格。VMware还以上述VDI方案的每个并发或命名用户的价格出售VSAN。这对于较小的部署来说是更大的经济意义。当您进入高端配置并开始将VSAN的价格与VMware的父EMC等公司相比，它也有意义。

最后的判决归结为经济学和实施。当前版本中的VSAN在VDI中具有紧密聚焦的目标用例，在那里它提供了初始成本和长期维护和支持的引人注目的优势。VSAN的用例无疑会随着时间的推移而扩大，但是对于1.0版，这不是一个不好的开始。

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