vSAN HCI Cluster = A cluster that provides both compute and storage to Virtual Machines;
vSAN Storage Cluster = A vSAN cluster that provides disaggregated storage for vSAN and vSphere clusters;
vSAN Compute Cluster = A vSphere cluster that does not have local vSAN storage, but instead, it mounts a remote vSAN datastore;
vSAN Stretched Cluster = A vSAN Cluster topology that extends a single logical vSAN cluster across two availability zones. A vSAN stretched cluster can tolerate a site failure.
These mappings describe the primary vSAN storage models used in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0. A vSAN HCI Cluster is the traditional hyperconverged model where the same cluster provides compute resources and contributes local storage devices to the vSAN datastore for running virtual machines. A vSAN Storage Cluster is a disaggregated storage model based on vSAN ESA; it provides storage capacity and performance to other vSAN or vSphere clusters instead of primarily running workloads itself. A vSAN Compute Cluster is a vSphere cluster that does not contribute local vSAN capacity. Instead, it consumes a remote datastore exported by a vSAN Storage Cluster, enabling compute and storage to scale separately. A vSAN Stretched Cluster extends a single logical vSAN cluster across two availability zones or sites and uses a witness to maintain quorum, allowing workloads to tolerate a full site failure. These distinctions are essential for choosing between HCI, disaggregated storage, remote storage consumption, and availability-zone resilience. Reference topics: vSAN HCI Cluster, vSAN Storage Cluster, vSAN Compute Cluster, vSAN Stretched Cluster, VCF Storage Models.
