Dell vSAN Ready Nodes with Dell ObjectScale to Run Your Modern Applications
Thu, 07 Jul 2022 14:52:56 -0000
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In my previous blogs, the focus has been on highlighting the value that Dell vSAN Ready Nodes incorporate in a standardized market segment. These value additions include the variety of form factors available, the existence of 13 models with Identity modules, and the special benefits that the integration with Open Manage Enterprise provides.
But, what about the workloads? One key factor to decide for an infrastructure choice is the benefits and advantages it may have for the type of workloads the business requires. Today, the ability to run effectively and incorporate enterprise features such as protection or replication determine the choice of platform that customers make.
In a world where cloud native applications (CNA) are the natural choice for new deployments, it is relevant to describe how Dell vSAN Ready Nodes behave is such scenarios.
Speaking about paradigms, CNA is to application development like unstructured data is to storage. The relevance of object storage, and the growth that it experiments every year, is substantial.
Wouldn’t it be great to put all these together under the Dell vSAN Ready Node hood?
There is a great VMware platform to simplify your DevOps experience by adding Kubernetes to your infrastructure, making it ready to run modern applications and minimize operational complexity. VMware Tanzu provides a self-service, consistent Kubernetes experience for developers to maximize their productivity, and security and data protection policies and features, out-of-the-box.
vSphere with Tanzu supervisor cluster architecture
A cluster that is enabled for vSphere with Tanzu is called a Supervisor Cluster. It runs on top of an SDDC layer that consists of ESXi for compute, NSX-T Data Center or vSphere networking, and vSAN, like in a Dell vSAN Ready Node. vSAN shared storage is used for persistent volumes for vSphere Pods, VMs running inside the Supervisor Cluster, and pods in a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster.
Dell ObjectScale, based on the Dell ECS platform, delivers a new, software-defined, microservices-based architecture using Kubernetes to provide enterprise-class object storage for modern, cloud-native applications in VMware environments.
Dell ObjectScale deployment option for VMware environments (Dell vSAN Ready Nodes)
Dell ObjectScale integration with VMware vSphere with Tanzu and the vSAN Data Persistence platform enable supporting cloud-native applications on Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. It also enables a global management platform for the distributed storage infrastructure under a single namespace with universal content access.
The components for the solution are:
- VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu
- NSX-T
- vSAN (in this example, Dell PowerEdge R650 vSAN Ready Nodes)
- vSAN Data Persistence platform
The solution is built upon four Dell PowerEdge R650 vSAN Ready Nodes configured in a vSAN cluster. This includes three VMware NSX-T manager nodes and three edge nodes for redundancy and high-availability. VMware NSX-T manager nodes were installed on the same vSAN cluster to conserve resources in a lab environment. In a production environment, NSX-T manager nodes can also be installed on an external cluster to provide management and data-plane separation and availability.
This architecture integrates Dell ObjectScale with VMware vSphere with Tanzu through vSAN Data Persistence platform enabling customers to deploy software-defined object storage (stateful services). It also makes containers as easy to manage as VMs. IT departments can deploy cloud-native web and mobile applications, dev/test environments, and AI/ML and analytics platforms over the same infrastructure that host their legacy VMs.
There are different deployment options available:
- Fully sharing the vSAN Ready Nodes clusters between ObjectScale data services and the workloads to be run
- Creating separate clusters in the vSAN Ready Node farm for ObjectScale data service and the workloads to be run
If you want to learn more about how Dell vSAN Ready Nodes can be built to host cloud-native workloads, see the VMware white paper Dell ObjectScale on VMware vSphere with Tanzu.
References
- White paper: Dell ObjectScale on VMware vSphere with Tanzu
- Dell ObjectScale
- Dell vSAN Ready Nodes Info Hub
- Blog: Running Dell ObjectScale on VMware vSphere with Tanzu
Author: Inigo Olcoz, Twitter: @virtualOlcoz