Are you wondering what it takes to enable the vSAN 7.0 file service? Is the enabling process time consuming, or is it a straightforward task? Just what are the steps needed to enable this great feature?

In this blog post, I will take you through the steps to enable the vSAN 7.0 file services. The process is very simple and it can be deployed quickly.

This post today is to get you started; if you want to learn more about the service, you can browse to the following link from VMware.

So let’s get started:

Enable vSAN File Service

Enabling the vSAN File Service is a very simple task. All you have to do is to browse to the cluster configuration and review the vSAN config. Click to enable the File Service; see the screenshot below:

At the next step – enter the File Service domain, its DNS and DNS suffix, then press next:

Next, enter the networking  information:

Next, configure the IP Pool:

Note: It is recommended that the same number of IPs as hosts is added;  as this is a lab we are working in, I will add only one IP:

After the deployment has been completed, you will have one vSAN file Service node per host:

Create the vSAN Share

After the deployment is completed, we are ready to create the shares. See the instructions below:

Vcenter -> cluster -> Configuration -> vSAN -> File Server Shares:

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Enter the share name; if you wish, limit the share size:

Configure the access control. In my lab, I kept the access open to any IP:

After the configuration process has completed and you have pressed finish, you will have the configuration in the screenshot below:

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We are ready to start using the NFS share. We can acquire the NFS URL as shown on the following screenshot:

Summary

In this blog post, I took you through the steps to enable the vSAN File Service. The aim of the blog is to help you get started with this feature so that you can learn more about it, and conduct your own testing. You should carefully design the configuration of your vSAN File Service.  You will recall that at the beginning of this blog post I shared the VMware document link. I recommend you use that link for more information before you choose the settings for your configuration of your vSAN File Service.

After you have done that, you can access the share using the URL obtained in the previous step:

…and then you can upload your files: