CSI Topology – Configuration How-To

In this post, we will look at another feature of the vSphere CSI driver that enables the placement of Kubernetes objects on different vSphere environments using a combination of vSphere Tags and a feature of the CSI driver called topology or failure domains. To achieve this, some additional entries must be added to the vSphere CSI driver configuration file. The CSI driver discovers each Kubernetes node/virtual machine topology, and through the kubelet, adds them as labels to the nodes. Please note that at the time of writing, the volume topology and availability zone feature was still in beta with vSphere…

2-node vSAN – witness network design considerations

It seems that 2-node vSAN for ROBO (remote office/branch office) deployments are becoming more and more popular. The fact that one can now connect the 2 vSAN hosts at the remote office directly back-to-back without needing a 10Gb switch has reduced the cost extensively. And with the introduction of a vSAN Enterprise for ROBO license edition with vSAN 6.6.1, you get the full feature set of vSAN on 2-node deployments. This new edition builds on the vSAN Advanced edition, and enables the use of features like native encryption and stretched clusters on a per-VM pricing model for smaller sites. The…

New vSAN Stretched Cluster Topology now supported

After publishing the vSAN Networking Guide earlier this year, Paudie O’Riordain and I received numerous questions regarding support on having different stretched clusters hosting each other’s witness appliances. These queries arose because we discussed a 2-node (ROBO) topology which allowed this to sort of configuration (i.e. the cross hosting of witnesses) via special request. But in the networking guide, we explicitly stated that this was not supported with vSAN stretched clusters. However, after some further testing by our engineering teams, we can now relax this restriction if there are 4 independent sites hosting the different stretched clusters. In this case,…