VMware recently announced VMware vSAN8 during VMware explore 2022, dedicated this article talking about some of those enhancements and the latest features which have been added. With vSAN8 VMware introduced vSAN express storage architecture which uses single-tier architecture as compared to the vSAN original storage architecture which uses two-tier architecture (dedicated cache and capacity disks) and is able to accommodate a wide range of storage devices and uses disks groups to provide performance through caching and capacity.
vSAN8 Express Storage Architecture uses a single tier architecture and is optimized for high-performance NVME- based flash devices, without using disk groups, and all the devices contribute toward performance and capacity. The advancements in vSAN8 architecture come from the new log-structured file system a new layer in the vSAN stack that allows vSAN to ingest data fast and prepare the data for full stripe write. Another layer that has been added in the vSAN8 stack is the vSAN Log-structured object manager which helps in minimizing the metadata overhead.
When it comes to incorporating the vSAN8 into the production environment , vSAN8 can co-exist with the existing vSAN clusters, and we can easily migrate the VM’s from the old vSAN cluster to the new vSAN8 cluster using ESA. We can upgrade to VSAN8 and still stay on the original two-tier architecture (original storage architecture) which will introduce all the enhancements to the original storage architecture.
