This paper does not cover the topic of vSAN ESA. However, in order to describe the benefits of 100 GbE networking to ESA, it is important to highlight the changes ESA brings to vSAN.

vSAN ESA is not a replacement for the current vSAN architecture, now referred to as vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA). Instead, vSAN ESA is an alternative architecture that leverages existing vSAN architecture. In addition, vSAN ESA offers upgrades that enable vSAN to harness the latest server hardware and protocols to deliver new capabilities and faster performance.

VMware published several articles after the launch of vSAN ESA, many of which can be found on the VMware vSAN ESA webpage. One of the new recommendations in ESA is to use compression combined with RAID 5 or RAID 6 storage policies (even for performance workloads). Previously, only RAID 1 was used for these workloads. To learn more about vSAN ESA, see these specific articles by VMware:

• An Introduction to the vSAN Express Storage Architecture
• RAID-5/6 with the Performance of RAID-1 using the vSAN Express Storage Architecture
• vSAN 8 Compression - Express Storage Architecture
• Adaptive Network Traffic Shaping with the vSAN Express Storage Architecture
• Designing vSAN Networks - 2022 Edition vSAN ESA
• Design and Sizing for vSAN ESA clusters
• vSAN 8 Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)