vSAN architecture recommendations

progress:

since the vSAN witness appliance is already an esxi image, i added it to my existing vcenter and created a new cluster.

so in this case, the "vSAN-Witness" VM in the "Main" cluster is the same machine as the "192.168.1.30" esxi host under the "Witness" cluster.

after doing that, "192.168.1.30" shows up as an eligible Witness in the vSAN config, but when I try to complete it, it's saying my hosts are mixed versions. which is true. i haven't upgraded my other host from 6.7 to 8.0 yet. i should've realized ahead of time. now i have to wait until i can have some downtime since that host includes my NAS 🤣 

@malcolm-r dude that is great thinking outside the box on the nested, nested config Hey let me know if you need to get your hands on the 6.7 appliance. You can change your witness appliance through the wizard in your vSAN configuration. I have done that a few times before and works well. it just syncs up metadata with the new witness appliance.

i think i may try and test direct-connect between the hosts rather than going through a switch. *in theory* it shouldn't matter. my 10gig switch has plenty of throughput.

@malcolm-r that's great. I had direct connect on a list of things to try but never got around to it. So, I am interested to see how well you find it works. With two hosts, it should work great. I know this makes for an interesting configuration that in theory could eliminate a 10 gig switch for ones that wanted to try 2-node vSAN.