You can enable deduplication and compression by editing configuration parameters on an existing all-flash vSAN cluster.

Prerequisites

Create an all-flash vSAN cluster.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the vSAN cluster.
  2. Click the Configure tab.
    Option Description
    vSphere Client
    1. Under vSAN, select Services.
    2. Click Edit.
    3. Enable Deduplication and Compression.
    4. (Optional) Select Allow Reduced Redundancy. If needed, vSAN reduces the protection level of your VMs, while enabling Deduplication and Compression. See Reducing VM Redundancy for vSAN Cluster.
    vSphere Web Client
    1. Under vSAN, select General.
    2. In the vSAN is turned ON pane, click the Edit button.
    3. Configure deduplication and compression on the cluster.
      1. Set deduplication and compression to Enabled.
      2. Enable reduced redundancy for your VMs. See Reducing VM Redundancy for vSAN Cluster.
  3. Click Apply or OK to save your configuration changes.

Results

While enabling deduplication and compression, vSAN updates the on-disk format of each disk group of the cluster. To accomplish this change, vSAN evacuates data from the disk group, removes the disk group, and recreates it with a new format that supports deduplication and compression.

The enablement operation does not require virtual machine migration or DRS. The time required for this operation depends on the number of hosts in the cluster and amount of data. You can monitor the progress on the Tasks and Events tab.