Scenario 1: Initial Storage Platform Deployment

In this scenario, we are comparing a simple deployment of a traditional medium size storage array system employing a Fibre Channel fabric, and an 8-host VMware ESXi™ cluster. In this example the Fibre Channel fabric is already in place, the ESXi hosts have host bus adaptors (HBAs) installed and cabled, and all physical equipment is racked, cabled and, ready for provisioning.

The comparative savings between vSAN and this traditional storage mechanism are generated by a reduction in storage array configuration tasks, which is likely to include a number of major elements, including:

1. The initial setup of system information such as interface settings, network settings, time settings, user and administrative access settings, and general Fibre Channel fabric configuration. In a vSAN configuration, this is pre-configured with the vSphere cluster settings. This activity has been estimated to be 40 minutes.

2. The initial configuration of disk and volume parameters on the storage array, including configuring items such as disk groups, disk group members, parity protection, storage tiers, and any tiering and caching policies required by the system. This configuration requires relatively infrequent activities. Therefore, such tasks are often slowed down by learning/remembering the activities to complete the task. This overhead has been included in this estimation of time. Based on the information gathered, this has been estimated to be 110 minutes, which varies depending on the number of disks, disk types, and the skill level and experience of the engineer performing the tasks.

3. The provisioning of initial volumes to ESXi hosts, including the configuring of multiple volumes to serve different requirements or SLAs, the masking of volumes to initiators, LUN masking, attachment of volumes to ESXi host, and verification/rework of configurations and host scanning. These activities have been estimated at 90 minutes, which varies depending on the number of physical host changes required.

For this scenario, we are estimating the potential for up to a 20x improvement in operational efficiency, assuming the deployment of an environment with sufficient network connectivity, bandwidth, and pre-installed disks within the vSAN cluster, as shown in Table 2.