Creating vSAN cluster

A VMware vSAN cluster is just a vSphere cluster with compliant ESXi hosts that exports local disks in a single shared datastore.

Before creating a vSAN cluster, you must match several requirements that are described in the administering VMware vSAN guide (https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.5/com.vmware.vsphere.virtualsan.doc/GUID-D2AAEC0C-D5C3-4885-A2C2-789DC0212850.html).

To create a new vSAN cluster with the vSphere Web Client, follow these steps:

1. In the Host and Clusters inventory, right-click a datacenter and select New Cluster....
2. Type a name for the cluster in the Name textbox.
3. Enable vSAN by selecting the vSAN Turn ON checkbox and click on the OK button. The cluster will appear in the inventory.

4. Now, just add the proper hosts to the vSAN cluster. For the disk configuration, see the Creating disk groups section.

If you enable vSAN on an existing cluster, the options will be a little more complex, as in the following screenshot:

Enabling vSAN is only the first step. Afterward, you need to configure different aspects, as follows:

• (Optional) enable compression and deduplication (only for all flash vSANs)
• (Optional) enable vSAN encryption
• (Optional) define the fault domains or stretched cluster configuration

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.

For more information, see the administering VMware vSAN guide (https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.5/com.vmware.vsphere.virtualsan.doc/GUID-5656EA30-F7C7-494C-A356-E1471942625A.html).