vSAN Data Protection Support for vSAN OSA and External Storage Arrays

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

This article provides clarification on whether vSAN Data Protection is supported for the vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA) and whether vSAN Data Protection snapshots can be redirected to an external storage array, such as Fibre Channel (FC).

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2, 9.0
vSAN 8.0 U3

Cause

The vSAN Data Protection feature is architecturally designed as a native, localized service that is strictly exclusive to the vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA).

Resolution

1. vSAN OSA Support: vSAN Data Protection is not supported for the vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA). It is strictly exclusive to the vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA), introduced in vSAN 8.0 U3 and integrated into VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2 and 9.0.
   
   
2. Snapshot Redirection: Redirection of vSAN Data Protection snapshots to another storage array, such as Fibre Channel (FC), is not supported.
   
   
3. In VCF 5.2, snapshots are stored directly within the same vSAN ESA datastore that hosts the source virtual machines.
   
   
4. In VCF 9.0, vSAN-to-vSAN Replication allows for the replication of these snapshots to a remote vSAN cluster, but the target must be a vSAN ESA datastore. It does not support Fibre Channel arrays as a replication target.
   
   
5. External Storage Alternatives: If the requirement is to store recovery points on an external Fibre Channel array, traditional methods must be utilized:
   • VADP-Based Backup: Utilize a third-party backup solution to back up the VMs from vSAN and store the backup files on a repository hosted on the FC storage.
   • vSphere Replication: Standard vSphere Replication can be used to replicate VMs from the vSAN datastore to a VMFS-on-FC datastore. This is managed separately from the vSAN Data Protection feature.