Main difference between vSAN ESA and OSA

[baber]

 As I know new version of vSAN with the name of ESA has released :

1- Does it mean on vSphere8 when we want to run vSAN we have 2 options ?  1- vSAN ESA  and vSAN OSA  ?

2- Are the main difference between ESA and OSA : on ESA we don't use cache tier 

3- As I find out we cannot run vSAN ESA for example on 4 DL580 G10 that I have in my site althought we can just run it on ready nodes such as VXRail . Is that correct ?

[a_p_]

1. Yes, you can have either OSA or ESA
2. There are several differences. Please see https://core.vmware.com/vsan-esa for details, and comparison.
3. vSAN ESA has strict hardware requirements, which currently require vSAN Ready nodes etc. to be fully supported. It may run on other hardware too, but you will likely not take the risk in a prod environment.

André

[Shen88]

@a_p_ has already outlined the answers very clearly. Just adding couple of useful links to determine the sample server configurations and explore what can/cannot be changed in a vSAN Ready Node.

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/vsanesa_profile.php

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/52084

[baber]

Thanks .but about follow table :

Description	vSAN-ESA-AF-2
Node Capacity (TB) (Min)	15
CPU (#cores) per Node (Min)	32
Memory (GB) (Min)	512
Network (GbE) (Min)	1 x 25

Does it means:

1- Minimum capacity on  one HPE DL580 15T? (for example 5*3TB NVME )

2- on the other hand does it mandatory to use 25G Nic ? even when we are not using this bandwidth in our environment ?

3- Does it your mean we cannot use ESA with 10G nic ?

[Shen88]

@baber, yes the minimum recommended networking bandwidth will be 25G for vSAN ESA, whereas for OSA it is still 10G refer - https://core.vmware.com/resource/vsan-frequently-asked-questions-faq#section11

More on the NIC Considerations could be read here - https://core.vmware.com/blog/designing-vsan-networks-2022-edition-vsan-esa

Now, with regards to the drive size for vSAN-ESA-AF-2 ReadyNode profile, I see the supported HPE vSAN ESA Server Models are - ProLiant DL360/380 Gen10 Plus.

Please refer vSAN Compatibility guide - https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=vsanesa 

Also, all official sizing exercises should use the vSAN ReadyNode sizer to give more precise and thorough guidance for your specific environment.

[depping]

25GbE is the minimum indeed. It is the minimum for a reason, you can't use the NVMe devices to the full without having sufficient bandwidth, this is why we have that minimum. if you have no IOPS/Latency requirement that requires ESA, then you may as well use OSA.

[baber]

1- Can we use vSAN OSA on vSphere8 or we just should use ESA for vSphere8 ?

2- I have bough a bunch of NVMe disks for vSAN before introduce ESA . Currently I have 10G NIC cards and my switch support just 10G . 

 As I find out I can just use vSAN OSA on vSAN 8 now with my equipments . Is that correct ?

3- If  the answer about Q2 is Yes , Does your mean I cannot get good performance in my design when using OSA with above equipments as I don't have 25G NIC and cannot run ESA  ?

[IRIX201110141]

Yes you can use vSAN OSA on vSphere 8.

Regards,
Joerg

[baber]

Would you please help me about about follow questions :

1- I have bough a bunch of NVMe disks for vSAN before introduce ESA . Currently I have 10G NIC cards on my hosts and my switch support just 10G . 

 As you said we must use 25G NIC cards to run ESA . Now does your mean I cannot get good performance in my environment when using OSA because you mentioned we need 25G NIC cards for NVMe disks ? 

2- You said we cannot run ESA when using 10G NICs . Does it your mean this is mandatory or VMware recommendation ? For example when we want to run ESA it will check our environment to detect if we are using 25G nics or not ?

[TheBobkin]

@baber 

1. No - 10GBps should suffice fine for the vast majority of OSA workloads, the supported network minimums for OSA remain unchanged.
In vSAN OSA, typically only larger, busier and or/using things like R5/R6 (or R5+R5/R6+R6 in stretched) clusters would be exhausting the resources of 10Gbps networks.

2. This is the supported network minimum - I don't think there is any hard-check that prevents using lower than this but if you choose to run on an unsupported configuration then you are taking responsibility for supporting this yourself when/if things go wrong.

[baber]

1- Does it your means when we want to use stretched cluster (2hosts) in ESA type,  it is not suitable use 10G ? Can we use 10G nic to implement ESA for standard implementation of vSAN ?

2- What is the main reason ESA implementation need minimum 25G nic ? If for NVME disks so in OSA implementation we can use NVME disks with 10G nic 

[depping]

1. Please read the documentation. It clearly states: with vSAN ESA 25GbE is the minimum NIC required. Lower is not supported.

2. I explained that above already.