HCI Mesh is a software-based approach for disaggregation of compute and storage resources in vSAN. HCI Mesh brings together multiple independent vSAN clusters by enabling cross-cluster utilization of remote datastore capacity within vCenter Server. HCI Mesh enables you to efficiently utilize and consume data center resources, which provides simple storage management at scale.
VMware Cloud Foundation 4.2 and later supports sharing remote datastores with HCI Mesh for VI workload domains.
You can create HCI Mesh by mounting remote vSAN datastores on vSAN clusters and enable data sharing from the vCenter Server. It can take up to 5 minutes for the mounted remote vSAN datastores to appear in the SDDC Manager UI.
For more information on sharing remote datastores with HCI Mesh, see "Sharing Remote Datastores with HCI Mesh" in Administering VMware vSAN 7.0 at https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/index.html.
Storage Type |
Consolidated Workload Domain |
Management Domain |
VI Workload Domain |
|---|---|---|---|
Principal |
No |
No |
No |
Supplemental |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Prerequisites for HCI Mesh
VMware Cloud Foundation does not support HCI Mesh as a principal storage type. As a result, a VI workload domain cluster must exist before HCI Mesh can be configured.
