Verify that the ESXi hosts in your organization meet the vSAN hardware requirements.
Storage Device Requirements
All capacity devices, drivers, and firmware versions in your Virtual SAN configuration must be certified and listed in the Virtual SAN section of the VMware Compatibility Guide.
Storage Component | Requirements |
---|---|
Cache |
|
Virtual machine data storage |
|
Storage controllers | One SAS or SATA host bus adapter (HBA), or a RAID controller that is in passthrough mode or RAID 0 mode. |
Memory
The memory requirements for vSAN depend on the number of disk groups and devices that the ESXi hypervisor must manage. Each host must contain a minimum of 32 GB of memory to accommodate the maximum number of disk groups (5) and maximum number of capacity devices per disk group (7).
Flash Boot Devices
- If the memory of the ESXi host has 512 GB of memory or less, you can boot the host from a USB, SD, or SATADOM device. When you boot a vSAN host from a USB device or SD card, the size of the boot device must be at least 4 GB.
- If the memory of the ESXi host has more than 512 GB, you must boot the host from a SATADOM or disk device. When you boot a vSAN host from a SATADOM device, you must use single-level cell (SLC) device. The size of the boot device must be at least 16 GB.
When you boot an ESXi 6.0 or later host from USB device or from SD card, vSAN trace logs are written to RAMDisk. These logs are automatically offloaded to persistent media during shutdown or system crash (panic). This is the only support method for handling vSAN traces when booting an ESXi from a USB stick or SD card. If a power failure occurs, vSAN trace logs are not preserved.
When you boot an ESXi 6.0 or later host from a SATADOM device, vSAN trace logs are written directly to the SATADOM device. Therefore it is important that the SATADOM device meets the specifications outlined in this guide.