VMware vSAN is enterprise-class storage virtualization software that, when combined with vSphere, enables organizations to manage compute and storage with a single platform—enabling HCI and hybrid cloud strategies. vSAN supports both all-flash storage configurations and hybrid configurations that incorporate solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard-disk drives (HDDs). It is an ideal solution for online transaction process (OLTP) and other workloads that are supported by SQL Server. The solution combines the ease and familiarity of the VMware product suite with the raw performance benefits of VMware vSAN HCI. You can automate storage operations with ease by using vSphere’s Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM). As part of the SDS control plane, SPBM enables vSphere administrators to manage capacity planning, differentiated service levels, and capacity headroom, to meet storage provisioning challenges.
vSAN powers leading Dell EMC HCI solutions including Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes and Dell EMC VxRail.
The solution that is documented in this white paper tested vSAN Ready Nodes running vSAN 7.0 demonstrating its ability to scale and deliver the performance that is required for SQL Server workloads. vSAN Ready Nodes provide customers with a validated framework for a risk-free deployment. They are preconfigured, tested, and certified to run VMware vSAN. Each vSAN Ready Node includes the appropriate amount of CPU, memory, network I/O controllers, NVMe, SSDs, and HDDs. This infrastructure combined with vSAN 7.0 features and performance form a foundation for deploying SQL Server 2019 OLTP workloads.