VMware happy for VSANs to work alongside actual SANs

When VMware launched its virtual storage area network (VSAN) a couple of weeks back, other software-defined storage players suddenly wanted to get in touch with El Reg to share their feelpinions on the topic. One such, Atlantis, was keen to let us know that its ILIO virtual-machine-acceleration kit could help out VSAN users by …

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction

"flash-heacy VSAN." -> "flash-heavy VSAN."

[Anonymous Coward]

VMware Virtual SAN and Shared Storage Support? Not in 5.5

Hmmm. Seems to be a gap in what VMware will support, versus what some ambitious users may be trying.

From the vSphere Storage Guide for ESXi 5.5.

Limitations of Virtual SAN

- You cannot use shared storage with Virtual SAN.

- Virtual SAN supports only SATA and SAS storage. You cannot use storage attached through USB, Fibre Channel, or iSCSI

Am I missing something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: VMware Virtual SAN and Shared Storage Support? Not in 5.5

They are suggesting you can use other SAN storage 'along side' vSAN. From a vSphere perspective it would show up as separate datastores than the vSAN datastores. You put your images on the vSAN datastores but add vDisks from the SAN datastores to your VMs for user data. You can't fold SAN storage 'underneath' vSAN as additional capacity managed by that software - that's not supported.

[Trevor_Pott]

Re: VMware Virtual SAN and Shared Storage Support? Not in 5.5

"You can't fold SAN storage 'underneath' vSAN as additional capacity managed by that software - that's not supported."

Not supported, yes. "Can't"? No.

[Trevor_Pott]

vSAN + EMC

You have more budget. We know you do. Spend it on our hegemony. Or we will take your firstborn!