Open-E JovianDSS with VMware - Questions & Answers

1. In regard to VMware, what does Open-E JovianDSS do exactly?

Open-E JovianDSS provides storage appliance - a physical data storage server or Storage Virtual Appliance, accessed via iSCSI or NFS protocol. Additionally, the storage has a built-in native backup and recovery functionality.

2. Is your software VMware certified?

Yes, JovianDSS is certified with ESXi 6.5, 6.0 U3, 6.0 U2 and 6.0 U1, 5.5 as “VMware Ready for Storage”. More info here»

3. Is Open-E JovianDSS fully compatible with VMware ESXi / vCenter?

Yes. The compatibility is confirmed through “VMware Ready for Storage” certification.

4. Is it possible to run Open-E JovianDSS as a virtual machine on VMware ESXi?

Yes. Open-E JovianDSS contains built-in VMware Tools, including VMware storage and network drivers.

5. How high is the manageable storage capacity in Open-E JovianDSS?

Open-E JovianDSS is able to scale up to zettabytes of storage, although the maximum tested manageable storage capacity up to date is 5PB (petabytes) of RAW storage.

6. Performance is not as critical as a stable system. How stable is your software in a virtual environment and how can you confirm it?

Each released version went through detailed and extensive QA tests. Additionally, we conduct a Hardware Certification Program which aims to prove that certain hardware will work stable with Open-E JovianDSS software. There is a wide network of Open-E clients who work with Open-E JovianDSS as storage for VMWare and it is proven that such systems are running without any interruption. Apart from that, Open-E JovianDSS is based on ZFS which is recognized as one of the most stable file systems.

7. Do you have any documentation (e.g. spreadsheets) that present how many IOPS can be reached with Open-E JovianDSS as a virtual machine?

We do not have such documentation. We advise you to use the Trial version of the software, which is available on our website at no cost, and examine how the system performs.

8. How does Open-E JovianDSS protect my data?

Open-E JovianDSS guarantees highest data protection thanks to a set of advanced features that provide Data Integrity with JovianDSS, for example:

Data and Metadata Check-summing
Self-Healing: Detecting and correcting Silent-Data-Errors with Scrub utility
Atomic Transaction Writes: continuously consistent data, no need for repairing the file system

9. Can I build cloud solutions with Open-E JovianDSS and VMware?

Yes, JovianDSS can be used as a storage backend for cloud solutions, since it works with ESXi, which is a part of vCloud.

10. How does a High Availability Storage Cluster setup consisting of VMware and Open-E JovianDSS work?

Open-E JovianDSS cluster constantly monitors storage for IO errors. In casy any errors are detected, the software moves the pool and its configured virtual IP from the affected node to another one. This operation is completely transparent for VMware machines and ensures the data are still available, even after a severe hardware failure of one of Open-E JovianDSS nodes.

11. What about the hardware compatibility?

Any 64bit architecture is compatible with Open-E JovianDSS. Read more about compatibility in System Requirements, Hardware Compatibility List and Certified Servers.

12. My storage team is interested in testing Open-E JovianDSS. What tools do you have for them?

We offer a free 60-day Open-E JovianDSS Trial for single node or high availability cluster configurations. Additionally, you can use a free JovianDSS Storage and RAID Calculator which helps calculate storage capacity depending on configuration and displays the exact license required for your storage setup with Open-E JovianDSS. For further assistance, you can contact pre-sales technical support.

13. What is the performance of Open-E JovianDSS as storage for VMWare machines?

Performance of Open-E JovianDSS depends on the hardware that is used in the environment. Also, high performance can be achieved by means of very efficient JovianDSS caching methods. Data can be cached either in RAM or through SSD.

14. Can Open-E JovianDSS be used as an alternative for vSAN?

Yes, Open-E JovianDSS can be used as a Storage Virtual Appliance (SVA) which is a solution that is equivalent to VMware vSAN. JovianDSS can work as a shared storage and as a part of a hyperconverged environment.

15. What backup products do you support?

Open-E JovianDSS features a service called ODP - Off-site Data Protection. It is based on snapshots and retention plans and can be configured with local or remote backup location. ODP supports consistent backup for VMware virtual machines. Clients are also allowed to use third party backup solutions which do not involve using internal backup clients (for example Veeam).

16. Can I use Open-E JovianDSS in an All-Flash virtual architecture?

Yes. Clients can use SSDs not only for caches but also for storage. Pools can be created with SSDs as well.

17. Can I extend the capacity of the VMware later on and how does this work with Open-E JovianDSS?

You can freely add more space to volumes and datastores as you go on the VMware side. Also, Open-E JovianDSS contains a functionality that enables adding additional pools, data groups, zvols or datasets.

18. How long is the reaction time once we report a support case?

SLA (Service Level Agreement) of support team is 4 hours for Premium support level. All Customers are eligible to contact the Support Team via phone or email as long as the support licence is valid. Usually Engineers are able to answer the ticket within 30 minutes, depending on the complexity of the registered case. More info about Open-E JovianDSS Support can be found here »