The advent of vSAN 8’s ESA architecture represents a significant step forward in storage technology. With its focus on performance and cost-efficiency, ESA offers a compelling option for companies evaluating their IT infrastructure investments.
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When VMware announced their next generation of storage technology, vSAN 8, back in November, my curiosity was piqued. Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m not necessarily a die-hard VMware enthusiast, but their technologies tend to have a cascading effect on the broader landscape of enterprise solutions. That’s why I was particularly intrigued by this new offering, specifically its brand new architecture: vSAN Express Storage Architecture, or ESA for short.
Last year was a whirlwind of updates from VMware, particularly in the second half. We saw new versions of NSX, with the shift to a simpler naming convention starting from version 4, thereby ditching the NSX-V or NSX-T tags. This was closely followed by the arrival of vSphere 8, the new host OS and management software. But I want to dig deeper into vSAN 8 here, as it offers some intriguing possibilities for businesses contemplating their storage futures.
Let’s take a moment to look back on storage tech for a more comprehensive understanding of vSAN 8’s innovations. Historically, enterprise storage was often bottlenecked by traditional hard disk drives, which relied heavily on mechanical parts for data read and write operations. In recent years, however, the widespread adoption of Solid-State Drives (SSDs) and the advent of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) have dramatically altered the enterprise storage landscape. SSDs offer far greater speeds compared to traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and have no mechanical parts, reducing the risk of mechanical failure. NVMe technology takes it a step further, significantly reducing latency and boosting Input/Output operations per second (IOPS).
Given these rapid technological advancements, what catches my eye about vSAN 8’s new architecture is how it capitalizes on these latest hardware improvements. Traditional vSAN architectures have had to balance the use of slower Capacity disks with faster Cache disks, but ESA eliminates this hierarchy entirely. That, to me, is where the true ingenuity lies. For example, instead of having dedicated Cache drives which often increase the overall cost, now all disks can be pooled into a single tier for storage, potentially saving significant amounts of money in total cost of ownership.
It’s worth noting that VMware isn’t forcing the industry’s hand here. They offer ESA as an optional architecture, which means businesses can stick with the “Original Storage Architecture,” or OSA, if that’s what they’re comfortable with. But the writing is on the wall: the industry is going to make a transition, sooner or later, to architectures like ESA, especially as older versions fall out of the development cycle for security patches and updates.
The ESA architecture also brings with it an entirely new way of handling data, something called vSAN LFS, or log-structured file system. It promises efficiency, and more importantly, flexibility. Remember, it’s not just storage we’re talking about, but also performance and latency, crucial factors that can affect the operation of an enterprise. LFS aims to offer a new level of control over how data is written and accessed, which should be a boon for those in search of both performance and cost-efficiency.
If you’re planning an upgrade from an older vSAN version, you can’t directly switch from OSA to ESA, due to the significant architectural differences. However, you can set up a new cluster with ESA and migrate your VMs. It’s a bit of a hassle, but then, isn’t the promise of a more efficient and cost-effective storage solution worth it?
The advent of vSAN 8’s ESA architecture represents a significant step forward in storage technology. As someone with a dual role in tech and account management, I’m curious to see how this development will influence not just VMware’s portfolio, but also broader IT strategies across industries. With its focus on performance and cost-efficiency, ESA offers a compelling option for companies evaluating their IT infrastructure investments. As the technology matures, it’s worth keeping an eye on how it may shape the storage solutions of the future.