Enabling vSAN file services

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To enable vSAN file services use following steps

  1. Login into vCenter
  2. Ideally distributed switch; a dedicated distributed port-group and optional VMkernel IPs on this distributed port-group are already configured for ESXi hosts
  3. Go to cluster -> Configure -> services. Click "Enable" or "edit" against vSAN file services.
  4. In the dialog box of vSAN file services enter following
    Approach
    Go with automatic approach with automatic download of required images
    File service domain
    Name via which file services can be accessed such as vfiles.example.com
    DNS servers
    Local DNS servers (possibly AD)
    DNS suffixes
    Various domain names used locally which should be able to access file services. (Example vfiles.example.com, example.com). Here we must add vfiles.example.com to DNS suffixes list for configuration to get accepted.
    Directory service
    If there is local AD and we enable this then only machines / users who are part of domain can access the created SMB shares. For this the service account should have administrative privileges to add required computer to AD computer list.
    Network parameters
    Mention distributed port-group to use along with netmask and gateway information
    Host IPs
    Choose as many IPs as esxi hosts. So if you have 5 hosts, ideally choose 5 IPs. For each IP we can map a DNS FQDN such as esxi01.vfiles.example.com in DNS server
  5. Create DNS entry of selected file service domain - vfiles.example.com pointing to file services IP chosen for hosts in previous step (All IPs of all hosts). Note that this is for file services IPs and not related to any VMkernel IPs that might have been assigned on that particular distributed port group.
  6. Ensure that forward DNS resolution for vfiles.example.com (To any of file services IP), esxi01.vfiles.example.com (To corresponding file services IP for esxi01, etc. works as expected.
  7. Wait for some time (eg 5 minutes) for file services VM to be created and configured at back-end
  8. Create a test share with desired name, protocol SMB (esp. if AD is configured) or NFS, desired quota settings
  9. Access the test share from appropriate client machine (Domain machine in case AD was configured), NFS client in case of NFS share.
    Note that in case AD is configured only AD users can connect to shares. For read-write permissions using Windows file permissions for read-write etc. control from windows explorer might work.


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Home > VMWare platform > vMWare VSAN > Enabling vSAN file services