vSphere and vSAN use storage policies to define specific storage placement rules and data service configuration rules. During virtual machine deployment, rather than individual rules, a predefined storage policy is selected, which simplifies deployment and ensures that suitable storage placement and data services are used.

Typically, when benchmarking a storage platform, a storage placement or protection method of mirroring or RAID 1 is selected. In addition, data services such as encryption or data reduction are disabled. However, with vSAN ESA, VMware are promoting “Performance without Compromise” and recommending the use of parity data protection methods (RAID 5 or RAID 6) and have included compression in the default storage policy. 

Note: To review detailed findings on near-penalty free compression, RAID 5 or RAID 6 performance relative to vSAN OSA RAID 1, and further analysis on VxRail with vSAN OSA 7.x & 8.x performance, contact your Dell Technologies account team.

Figure 1.   Creating vSAN storage policy