You can edit cluster properties to enable vSAN on an existing cluster.

Prerequisites

Verify that your environment meets all requirements. See "Requirements for Enabling vSAN" in vSAN Planning and Deployment.

Note: vSAN HCI Mesh compute clusters have limited configuration options.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to an existing host cluster.
  2. Click the Configure tab.
  3. Under vSAN, select Services.
  4. Click Configure vSAN.
  5. Select the type of vSAN cluster to configure, and click Next.
    • Single site cluster.
    • Single site cluster with custom fault domains.
    • Two node vSAN cluster.
    • Stretched cluster.
    • vSAN HCI Mesh compute cluster. For more information, see "Sharing Remote Datastores with HCI Mesh" in Administering VMware vSAN.
  6. Configure the vSAN services to use, and click Next.
    • Configure vSAN performance service. For more information, see "Monitoring vSAN Performance" in vSAN Monitoring and Troubleshooting.
    • Enable File Service. For more information, see "vSAN File Service" in Administering VMware vSAN.
    • Configure vSAN Network options. For more information, see "Designing the vSAN Network" in vSAN Planning and Deployment .
    • Configure vSAN historical health service.
    • Configure iSCSI target service. For more information, see "Using the vSAN iSCSI Target Service" in Administering VMware vSAN.
    • Configure Data Management options, including deduplication and compression, data-at-rest encryption, and data-in-transit encryption.
    • Configure capacity reservations and alerts. For more information, see "About Reserved Capacity" in vSAN Monitoring and Troubleshooting.
    • Configure advanced options:
      • Object Repair Timer
      • Site Read Locality for stretched clusters
      • Thin Swap provisioning
      • Large Cluster Support for up to 64 hosts
      • Automatic Rebalance
  7. Claim disks for the vSAN cluster, and click Next.
    Each host requires at least one flash device in the cache tier, and one or more devices in the capacity tier. For more information, see "Managing Disk Groups and Devices" in Administering VMware vSAN.
  8. Review the configuration, and click Finish.