Introduced in VCF version 4.2 vSAN HCI Mesh supports the sharing of spare vSAN storage capacity between VxRail clusters in a VI workload domain. It can only be used as a secondary storage option and either vSAN or FC storage need to be used for primary storage. It enables an alternative method to alleviate decreasing storage capacity in a VI workload domain. This can be useful for environments that are not compute-constrained in a VI workload domain in order to avoid adding nodes which increase both compute and storage resources.
The following prerequisites must be met before configuring vSAN HCI Mesh:
The configuration of the client and server VxRail clusters in a vSAN HCI mesh is performed in the VxRail cluster level using the vClient. SDDC manager detects the presence of a vSAN HCI Mesh in a VI workload domain and alerts the user through SDDC Manager. All existing VCF on VxRail workflows are compatible with vSAN HCI mesh. There are constraints built into SDDC Manager to prevent the removal of a dependent VI workload domain or dependent VxRail cluster if there is a sharing of a vSAN datastore in effect.