You can use the vSphere Client to configure vSAN on an existing cluster.

Note:

You can use Quickstart to quickly create and configure a vSAN cluster. For more information, see "Using Quickstart to Configure and Expand a vSAN Cluster" in vSAN Planning and Deployment .

Prerequisites

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

Create a cluster and add hosts to the cluster before enabling and configuring vSAN. Configure the port properties on each host to add the vSAN service.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to an existing host cluster.
  2. Click the Configure tab.
  3. Under vSAN, select Services. Configure vSAN button
    1. Select an HCI configuration type.
      • vSAN HCI provides compute resources and storage resources. The datastore can be shared across clusters in the same data center, and across clusters managed by remote vCenters.
      • vSAN Compute Cluster provides vSphere compute resources only. It can mount datastores served by vSAN Max clusters in the same data center and from remote vCenters.
      • vSAN Max (vSAN ESA clusters) provides storage resources, but not compute resources. The datastore can be mounted by client vSphere clusters and vSAN clusters in the same data center and from remote vCenters.
    2. Select a deployment option (Single site vSAN cluster, Two node vSAN cluster, or vSAN stretched cluster).
    3. Click Configure to open the Configure vSAN wizard. Configure vSAN wizard
  4. Select vSAN ESA if your cluster is compatible, and click Next.
  5. Configure the vSAN services to use, and click Next.
    Configure data management features, including deduplication and compression, data-at-rest encryption, data-in-transit encryption. Select RDMA (remote direct memory access) if your network supports it.
  6. Claim disks for the vSAN cluster, and click Next.
    For vSAN Original Storage Architecture (vSAN OSA), each host that contribute storage requires at least one flash device for cache, and one or more devices for capacity. For vSAN Express Storage Architecture (vSAN ESA), each host that contributes storage requires one or more flash devices.
  7. Create fault domains to group hosts that can fail together.
  8. Review the configuration, and click Finish.

Results

Enabling vSAN creates a vSAN datastore and registers the vSAN storage provider. vSAN storage providers are built-in software components that communicate the storage capabilities of the datastore to vCenter Server.

What to do next

Verify that the vSAN datastore has been created. See View vSAN Datastore.

Verify that the vSAN storage provider is registered.