VSAN Cluster Shutdown/Startup

Last day of VSAN Training. Learning about some day 2 operations stuff this morning. Went through the high level overview of the process for properly powering down, and powering back up, a VSAN cluster. I am sure I am going to have a customer ask me about this eventually so just putting it here so I remember it.

The Shutting Down and Restarting a VSAN Cluster process is pretty well spelled out in the VMware docs.

Powering Down a VSAN Cluster

1. Power down all VMs on the Cluster
2. Place all cluster hosts in Maintenance Mode – select “no data migration”, deselect “move powered off vms”
3. Power Down All hosts in the cluster

Bringing the VSAN Cluster back up is pretty much the same process in reverse. One thing to note, unlike with traditional 3-tier, you need to bring all hosts back up together.

Powering on a VSAN Cluster

1. Power on all hosts in the cluster
2. Exit all hosts from maintenance mode
3. Power on VMs

Again someone will probably need to do this and will ask me about this at some time. I forget as much as I remember, so it will be here for me, and maybe for you, to find it again.