In today’s dynamic business environment, enterprises are increasingly seeking agile and scalable private cloud solutions. VMware partners are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this trend, and vSAN, VMware’s software-defined storage solution, is a powerful tool to add to your private cloud arsenal. Let’s delve into why vSAN, with its new licensing model and advanced architecture, is a strategic asset for building compelling private cloud offerings.

The Private Cloud Imperative

Organizations are looking to migrate to private clouds ( on prem or partner hoststed or partner managed ) to gain greater control, flexibility, and security over their IT infrastructure. Private clouds offer several advantages:

• Security and Compliance: Maintain control over data and applications within a secure, private environment.
• Improved Resource Utilization: Consolidate resources and eliminate silos, leading to more efficient allocation and utilization.

• Enhanced Agility: Rapidly provision and scale resources to meet changing business demands.

vSAN: The Bedrock of a Robust Private Cloud

vSAN plays a critical role in building a feature-rich private cloud solution. Here’s how it empowers partners with a new licensing model and advanced architecture:

• Simplified Infrastructure Management: vSAN integrates seamlessly with existing VMware tools, streamlining provisioning, deployment, and management of private cloud infrastructure.
• Scalability on Demand: Effortlessly scale storage and compute resources within your private cloud to accommodate business growth.
• Reduced Operational Costs: The software-defined nature of vSAN eliminates the need for expensive, dedicated storage hardware, leading to significant cost savings.
• New vSAN Licensing Model: The recent shift to a per-core consumption model offers predictable pricing (VCF provides 1 TiB of vSAN entitlement for each VCF core purchased), allowing you to accurately forecast costs and deliver competitive private cloud solutions.
• vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA): The ESA is optimized to exploit the full potential of the very latest in hardware and unlocks new capabilities, simplifies deployment and streamlines management for private cloud environments.

Power of ESA

The Express Storage Architecture in vSAN 8 stands on the shoulders of much of the architecture found in OSA included in previous versions of vSAN, and vSAN 8.  vSAN had already solved many of the great challenges associated with distributed storage systems, and we wanted to build off of these capabilities while looking at how best to optimize a data path to reflect the capabilities of today’s hardware.

The advances in architecture primarily come from two areas, as illustrated in below figure:

An optimized log-structured object manager and data structure.  This layer is a new design built around a new high-performance block engine and key value store that can deliver large write payloads while minimizing the overhead needed for metadata.  The new design was built specifically for the capabilities of the highly efficient upper layers of vSAN to send data to the devices without contention.  It is highly parallel and helps us drive near device-level performance capabilities in the ESA. 

A new patented log-structured file system.  This new layer in the vSAN stack – known as the vSAN LFS – allows vSAN to ingest new data fast and efficiently while preparing the data for a very efficient full stripe write.  The vSAN LFS also allows vSAN to store metadata in a highly efficient and scalable manner.

For more info on ESA, check here – https://core.vmware.com/blog/introduction-vsan-express-storage-architecture

vSAN MAX: Powering Mission-Critical Private Clouds

vSAN Max is a distributed scale-out storage system for vSphere clusters.  It is powered by the vSAN ESA, so it offers the capabilities that are a part of the ESA, but serves as a storage-only cluster.  It uses vSAN’s native protocol and data path for cross-cluster communication, which preserves the management experience and provides the highest levels of performance and flexibility for a distributed storage system.

For more details check here : https://core.vmware.com/blog/introducing-vsan-max

Beyond Efficiency: The vSAN Advantage

vSAN offers more than just operational benefits. Here’s how it elevates your private cloud proposition:

• Faster Time to Market: The rapid deployment capabilities of vSAN, allow you to deliver private cloud solutions to clients quickly and efficiently.
• Improved Service Delivery: vSAN’s inherent performance and scalability, coupled with vSAN MAX for demanding workloads, enable you to offer high-performance private cloud environments for any customer need.
• Enhanced Security: vSAN integrates with VMware security features, allowing you to build private clouds that meet stringent security compliance requirements.

Partnering for Private Cloud Success

To maximize your success with vSAN in the private cloud domain or VMware based public cloud domain, consider these steps:

• Develop Private Cloud Expertise: Invest in training and resources to build a team of experts proficient in designing, deploying, and managing private cloud solutions with vSAN, including the new licensing model and vSAN ESA architecture.
• Craft Compelling Private Cloud Packages: Develop standardized or customizable private cloud packages that leverage vSAN’s strengths to address specific customer needs, including options for cost-optimized vSAN configurations or high-performance vSAN MAX deployments.
• Showcase Customer Success Stories: Demonstrate the value proposition of vSAN-powered private clouds through successful client case studies and testimonials, highlighting the benefits of the new licensing model, vSAN ESA, and vSAN MAX for diverse private cloud requirements.

Conclusion

VMware partners have a tremendous opportunity to lead the private cloud charge. By embracing VMware vSAN, its new licensing model, advanced vSAN ESA architecture, and the power of vSAN MAX, you can empower businesses to thrive in the digital age. Invest in vSAN expertise, craft compelling private cloud offerings, and watch your business soar as a trusted advisor in the private cloud revolution.