What this book covers

Chapter 1, Hardware Selection for Your VSAN Cluster, provides guidance on how to build your own VSAN cluster hardware, or how to select from a VSAN Ready Node.

Chapter 2, Initial Configuration and Validation of Your VSAN Cluster, provides the step-by-step procedure to configure your new VSAN cluster and ensure that it is working properly.

Chapter 3, Storage Policy-based Management, introduces the concept of policy-based management, outlines how and why it is useful, and shows how to implement and use storage policies.

Chapter 4, Monitoring VSAN, outlines how to monitor the VSAN cluster following deployment and into production.

Chapter 5, VSAN Maintenance Operations, describes how VSAN maintenance is performed, from cluster expansion to patching to modifying virtual machines.

Chapter 6, Ruby vSphere Console, covers the VSAN-related aspects of the powerful RVC utility that is bundled with the vCenter Server.

Chapter 7, Troubleshooting VSAN, discusses how to identify and resolve various problems that may occur in the Virtual SAN environment.

Chapter 8, Support Success, should you need to contact VMware Support to pursue issue resolution, this chapter sets you up for success by outlining the steps you should take to ensure a smooth and rapid support engagement.

Chapter 9, VSAN 6.0, covers specific changes in VSAN 6.0 and calls out procedural differences between VSAN 6.0 and VSAN 5.5.

Appendix A, Chapter-specific Expansion, highlights a number of VSAN concepts that we discussed throughout this book, which can be expanded with supplementary information to improve comprehension. This information is presented on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Appendix B, Additional VSAN Information, highlights additional technical details about Virtual SAN and provides information about useful third-party tools.