Support for Using vSAN ESA on Non-Certified Hardware for POC Purposes

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

Previously, Managing vSAN ESA clusters such as creation, expansion, and stretching required certified vSAN ESA disks. This limitation prevented users from evaluating vSAN ESA if their existing disks were not certified.

To overcome this, we have introduced a new configurable property that allows users to evaluate vSAN ESA features within the SDDC Manager workflow, even when using non-certified SSD disks.

This configurable property should be used only for proof-of-concept (POC) or non-production environments. It is also intended for cases where the vSAN ESA disks are listed in the HCL JSON but cannot be programmatically verified as supported by the installer.

Environment

5.2.2, 9.0.1.0, 9.1.0.0+

Resolution

Steps to enable this feature:

VCF Cloud Builder Bringup (5.2.2)

1. SSH into the Cloud Builder with vcf user and then elevate to root with su.
   
   
2. Add the following property "vsan.esa.sddc.managed.disk.claim=true" to /etc/vmware/vcf/bringup/application.properties
   
   
3. Restart the bringup service
   
   systemctl restart vcf-bringup

VCF Installer Bringup (9.0.0.0+)

1. SSH into the VCF Installer with vcf and then elevate to root with su.
   
   
2. Add the following property "vsan.esa.sddc.managed.disk.claim=true" to /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application.properties
   
   
3. Restart the domainmanager service.
   
   systemctl restart domainmanager

Host Commission.

1. SSH into the SDDC manager with vcf and then elevate to root with su.
   
   
2. Add the following property to the "vsan.esa.sddc.managed.disk.claim=true" to /etc/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/application.properties
   
   
3. Restart the operationmanager service
   
   systemctl restart operationmanager

Create Domain/Cluster, Add Host and Stretch Cluster

1. SSH into the SDDC manager with vcf and then elevate to root with su.
   
   
2. Add the following property "vsan.esa.sddc.managed.disk.claim=true" to /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application.properties
   
   
3. Restart the domainmanager service.
   
   systemctl restart domainmanager