Supermicro SuperServer 5028D-TN4T vSAN dream is alive! Home lab video overview features (unsupported) Intel SSDs and Samsung M.2 SSDs
This hardware is not on the VMware vSAN Compatibility Guide. For All Flash vSAN, you are supposed to use enterprise storage with PLP (Power Loss Protection / Super Capacitors), and pass through drive controllers that have high queue depths (which SATA doesn't have). See also Requirements and considerations for the deployment of VMware vSAN (2068911), and this related discussion about issues when trying the Samsung SM961 and Micron 7100. Home lab enthusiasts will try anyway, but you've been warned, attempting such tests is done at your own risk, knowing full well that you are completely unsupported in doing so.
Original article appears below.
I had this burning desire to know what it would be like to have 3 identical SuperServers in my home lab. Who doesn't? The idea was to build out an actual Virtual SAN, aka, vSAN 6.1, without having to do any nesting for my testing. This idea grew more possible as I watched VMware's Peter Keilty present at my local Hartford, CT VMUG USERCON back in May. Original tweet with many replies here. I think of vSAN as a way to distribute your SSDs capacity in a RAID that spans multiple hosts (servers). It's all presented as a single datastore. This is software-defined storage, see setup steps.
In the end, I had only about one day to test the recently released vSAN 6.1 that arrived with vSphere 6.0 Update 1. I didn't quite get the All Flash license key working, not sure why. I did find that special key in my EVALExperience portal, but I couldn't seem to get the vSphere Web Client to allow me to configure All Flash storage, as will be seen in upcoming video.
I worked around this by flagging 3 2.5" Intel SSDs, one per host, as HDDs. They became the primary storage pool, with M.2 SSDs doing the read/write caching. I wasn't focused on speed testing anyway, given I don't yet have 10GbE working, so my focus was really just on getting a feel for how the whole setup and usage worked, and how it responds to a host failure (abrupt SuperServer IPMI power off)
@keiltypeter Intense presenter, great topic! https://t.co/Q7MSEKqead pic.twitter.com/dsoy5QCWyV
— Paul Braren (@paulbraren) May 21, 2015.@keiltypeter @Supermicro_SMCI Imagine 3 of these little 10GB Supermicros for home vSAN, hmm: https://t.co/WccZeID4Vc pic.twitter.com/nS09bubQHB
— Paul Braren (@paulbraren) May 21, 2015These vSAN ideas initially came to me after I had read about this little but very capable SuperServer system way back in March, and before I could even order in June. Well, thanks to a lot of leg work with finding the right contacts, I managed to convince Supermicro and Wiredzone to loan me two additional SuperServers for September, which greatly helped for my cross country travels including a user group demonstration, and the ability to make the below informal video. Yes, it was quite a bit of fun!
While I would have preferred to use (currently unsupported) 10GbE coupled with storage that's on the VMware vSAN compatibility list, borrowers can't be choosers. Having temporary access to 3 Intel SSDs and 3 Samsung M.2 drives sure worked out well for my tinkering. This was a fantastic opportunity.
I have many more videos and articles coming up soon. As a matter of fact, I have one ready for you right here, right now!
See also at TinkerTry
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Superguide: Supermicro SuperServer 5028D-TN4T - THE Ultimate Home Virtualization Lab
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Home Server Show Meetup 2015 - My experience and my Superserver presentation
Sep 12 2015 - Intel Xeon D-1500 crams incredible virtualization lab specs into tiny mITX size, codename Broadwell-DE
Mar 09 2015
