Setup vSAN file service on vSphere 8 for NFS

The vSAN file service creates a share on vSAN so that clients can connect to a SMB or NFS share.

For a stretched cluster you need to create affinity rules for the preferred site and secondary site for the agents vms.

When doing the setup you will need a vsan agent per host so if you have a stretch cluster of 8 esxi hosts you will need 8 dns entries and ips

For example

vsan-fs001 – 10.0.0.180

vsan-fs002 – 10.0.0.181

vsan-fs003 – 10.0.0.182

vsan-fs004 – 10.0.0.183

vsan-fs005 – 10.0.0.184

vsan-fs006 – 10.0.0.185

vsan-fs007 – 10.0.0.186

vsan-fs008 – 10.0.0.187

You will also need to create a service account that have permissions to the OU for creating and deleting computer objects and you will need to create a new OU as well.

First you will need to download the 6 files from the Broadcom site make sure it matches your esxi version “VMware vSAN file services appliance”

Next create all your dns entries one for each esxi host

vsan-fs001

vsan-fs002

Next I will create a new port group using the same vlan as my management

Give it a proper naming convention something like vsanfs at the end

Assign a vlan and customize options

Promiscuous mode and forged transmits will need to be turned on and mac learning, this will get done automatically anyways

Use route based on physical nic load but ensure it matches the rest of your environment

Next enabled vsan file service at the cluster level

Select your port group you created and add the 6 files you downloaded earlier and click enable

Next click configure domain

Give it a name (use your active directory domain name here “vcf.sddc.lab” for the file service domain)

Now put in your dns servers, dns suffixes, subnet mask, gateway and your vsan file server ips and dns remember if you have a stretched cluster it will show a little different here it will have ip pool for preferred and ip pool for secondary. I would setup half as preferred and other half as secondary for the affinity site, i wouldn’t leave as the either option or you can just do all as preferred

example for a stretched cluster

vsan-fs001 – 10.0.0.180 – preferred

vsan-fs002 – 10.0.0.181 – preferred

vsan-fs003 – 10.0.0.182 – preferred

vsan-fs004 – 10.0.0.183 – preferred

vsan-fs005 – 10.0.0.184 – secondary

vsan-fs006 – 10.0.0.185 – secondary

vsan-fs007 – 10.0.0.186 – secondary

vsan-fs008 – 10.0.0.187 – secondary

Next we will need to create a domain user with sufficient privileges to create and delete computer objects in the OU

New user vsan-fs-svc

New OU don’t put special characters in it otherwise it wont work.

Click view in Active directory and click advanced features > Right click the OU and go to properties > click the security tab > click add and add new service account