Dell Technologies, in partnership with Broadcom, has worked to determine the benefits of increased network connectivity for the new VMware vSAN 8.0 Express Storage Architecture (ESA) as delivered with VxRail.

In recent years, 25 GbE networking speed was considered more than sufficient for HCI networking. However, VMware has set the minimum networking speed requirements for vSAN ESA at 25 GbE with a recommendation for 100 GbE. Dell Technologies performed testing to compare 25 GbE to 100 GbE networking interfaces. The evidence discovered during testing confirms that 100 GbE is preferred for vSAN ESA deployments

In addition to detailing the benefits of 100 GbE, this paper highlights other key benefits afforded by vSAN ESA that makes the combination of 100 GbE networking and VxRail with vSAN ESA is an ideal option for customers demanding the most of their storage performance. This combination allows customers to take full advantage of VxRail vSAN ESA based deployments.

Note: The findings in this paper also apply to equivalently configured Dell vSAN Ready Nodes.