Enabling VSAN on your cluster
Now that we have prepared the cluster, applied licensing, configured networking, and prepared the physical disks, we are finally ready to enable VSAN on the cluster. The hard part is done—from here, the process is very simple and we will have a functional VSAN cluster in just a few more steps!
Getting ready
You should be logged in to the vSphere Web Client as an administrator or user, authorized to alter cluster-level settings and VSAN.
How to do it…
- From the vSphere Web Client, navigate to: Home | Hosts and Clusters | Datacenter | Cluster | Manage | Virtual SAN | General, and click on the Edit… button:
- Check the Turn ON Virtual SAN checkbox and select your disk-claiming rules by selecting the appropriate option from the Add disks to storage drop-down menu, and then click on OK.
Note
You have two options for disk claiming
Automatic mode will automatically claim all unused disks and SSDs for use by VSAN and will automatically construct your disk groups. When in Automatic mode, manual overrides and configuration changes (decommissioning disk groups, selective expansion of disk groups, and so on) are not possible.
Manual mode will enable VSAN but will not claim any disks for you or build any disk groups. If you choose this option, you must manually claim disks.
- VSAN will then be enabled, and if applicable, disk groups will be automatically created. This process can take some time. Please monitor the task progress in the Recent Tasks pane in the vSphere Web Client.
How it works…
After checking the Turn ON Virtual SAN box, vCenter will coordinate cluster creation amongst all hosts in the cluster. The cluster will be formed and all hosts will join following an election. If you opted for automatic disk claiming, the disks will be partitioned and the disk group relationships (spinning disks and SSDs) built.
If you opted for automatic claiming, the cluster will now be formed and storage will be available and ready to use.
There's more…
Automatic disk-claiming mode can potentially preclude certain operations in the future.
In automatic mode, disks are managed in a totally automated way, with no possibility of manual overrides. If you wish to destroy a disk group in the future, you will be unable to do so if the cluster is set to automatic mode for disk claiming. To perform certain maintenance tasks like decommissioning a group, you will need to move the cluster into Manual mode from the VSAN general settings page. You can reach that field by repeating steps one and two in this recipe.
See also
- For the manual disk claiming process, please see the next recipe