In my home lab (nested environment) i have tried vSAN. I don’t want one more VM to iSCSI storage whitch reserve resourche like memory. I used to Openfiler for solve this problem, but i have wanted to try vSAN.

I little bit from my environment:

My first test whitch i tried my lab was vShere Replication, so i builded two sites. One in NY and an other in LA. I  kepd NY site after i had done my test. This site consist of 3 ESXi 6.0 host and each host has 12GB memory, and 4 vCPU, one cluster (CLU-NY-1) and one linux base VCSA with latest release.

I’m planning one more article from vSAN where i show how can configure it, but in this article i’m going to write about how do shut down a vSAN cluster whitch store in vSAN’s datastore VCSA server.

I found vmware KB Article from this, and i will follow this intructions ins this articel.

1 – Shut down all VM exept for VCSA (this will be the last VM)

2 – Make a note which host your vCenter Server virtual machine resides on. VMware recommend to migrate the vCenter Server virtual machine to the first ESXi host, so you can easily find the virtual machine when powering on your VSAN Cluster again. (below)

3 – Ensure there are no VSAN components currently resynching.

4 – Shut down VCSA

5 – Enable SSH all ESXi hosts. You can login to vSphere Client (becouse web interface have shuted down) and click “Configuration” button, under this tab U can found in Software box “Security Profile” menu. In the right corner click “Properties…” and enable SSH service.

When you enabled SSH service you can see a warning messages:
“SSH for the host has been enabled”

You can disable this warning messages, when you follow the steps from Yellow-Bricks site. This still work ESXi 6.0, i tried.

6 – Enter maintenance mode all ESXi hosts, use this command:

# esxcli system maintenanceMode set -e true -m noAction

7 – Shut down ESXi hosts via DCUI

Powering On vSAN Cluster

1 – Power on ESXi host(s)

2 – Exit from maintenace mode all ESXi host

# esxcli system maintenanceMode set -e false

3 – Login that ESXi where was your VCSA when U shuted down that. In my example it is 192.168.2.150

4 – Right click VCSA (vc-ny) and select from “Power” menu “Power On” function

5 – Do a quick health check on the VSAN cluster.