Starwind vsan free setup reddit. Another possibility is Datacore https://www.

Starwind vsan free setup reddit I will soon be the owner of two DL360p G8 servers and as I have a bunch of 200G SAS SSDs sitting here, I was wondering about running a 2 node vSAN with and without a witness host. Each node is licensed to create 5TB of Highly Available storage. We found that we can build the same setup with Starwind VSAN - it allows flexible storage configuration and requires minimum 1Gbps for storage replication. The point I'm trying to understand above is where its configures Software iSCSI in ESXi host (in Connecting StarWind virtual disk to VMware ESXi server under Connecting StarWind SAN & NAS to the hypervisor server) is this for other ESXi hosts so they can access the Datastore ? Or is the iSCSI connectivity to present the disk as a SAN/NAS ? More importantly, I'm open to recommendations for alternative SAN solutions that might better suit my setup. We use Starwinds VSAN in various environments (Hyper-V, VMware) and are currently transitioning some customers to Proxmox + Starwinds VSAN. Started with a 2-node VSAN 6. It could happen due to various reasons, such as firmware or driver issues, misconfiguration of OS or StarWind VSAN itself. Do you happen to have working experience with Starwind vSAN? If so I have a couple of questions. We succesfully deployed these solutions in VMware environments last couple of years, and have no problems with those at all. Thankfully, *knock on wood*, we haven't had any issues with vSAN on 7. I put one of them into VSAN maintenance mode while I was doing a recompose operation. Apr 28, 2021 · StarWind has released a new and very exciting new solution that is based on their robust VSAN solution, called StarWind SAN & NAS Free. Would like a basic 1+1+Q mirror HA setup, so looking at HAST+CARP, drbd, and came across a couple other solutions from linbit: LINSTOR and Linbit vSAN. ) HBA or RAID controller will be added via a DirectPath I/O passthrough device to a StarWind VM; vCenter is installed in the environment to manage ESXi hosts Have you considered the Linux side of the world? You could always run Ceph (either hyper converged on each host or a dedicated 3 node cluster) and just connect to that Ceph cluster over iSCSI. com/vsan-for-reddit-members As for free version, it includes Powershell samples, which cover everything needed to create highly available devices for your environment. I had to use them both together. Free is CLI only. Originally looked at S2D since we already have Datacenter licencing it seemed an obvious choice. 7 cluster (2 hosts + 1 witness VM). 7 also installed, it’s an old laptop and I used this before my NUC arrived. S2D cluster validation is sensitive to anything, e. These are the two tutorials that I used. For us, that thing just worked (and I believe is still working). I've heard numerous horror stores with Starwind Virtual SAN and have avoided it (along with the likes of SANSymphony and other "virtual SAN/SDS/etc. Starwind looks interesting but their free tier looks really handicapped (limited to 3 nodes, etc) and I’d also want a GUI for our global support operations team because I don’t want to carry a pager. It's basically a two or three node HCI iSCSI solution. However, I am in a really small company without close to the budget for the HCA option. (It only has 3 hosts temporarily). Thank you! I've been booting Linux (mostly Linux) as well as VMware around for a long time in the Enterprise, and there are so many itches that Proxmox has the potential to scratch. It can create iSCSI targets as well as share virtual and physical devices. Hi r/homelab, I'm recently planning to upgrade my virtualization cluster from StarWind vSAN to physical SAN's. Starwind features highly available shared storage starting from 2 nodes; no witness required since heartbeat is used. According to our experience, most of the issues are not related to StarWind VSAN, but to a combination of our software with an underlying OS stack and hardware used. In this configuration you install the Management Console on a Windows box (in my case on a local PC) and apply the free license. You can indeed create a separate datastore on the hosts that make up the vSAN cluster just like you would for non-vSAN hosts. Also, vSAN is indeed distributed storage. Professional Edition: Intended for SMBs and Remote Offices/Branch Offices (ROBO) which are willing to expand their infrastructure to enter theEnterprise I ran 2 ESXi hosts for close to 2 years with that setup (500GB drive in each host dedicated to vSAN storage, 250GB in each for the the Starwind virtual appliance's VM disk). StarWind VSAN Commercial comparison at https://www. 2 VMs nested on esxi. VMware vSAN is indeed highly-priced and is out of the budget for many small enterprises. Another possibility is Datacore https://www. I have publish a new ebook in my Blog with the title How to Build 2 Node HYPER-V Failover Cluster with Starwind VSAN. The device with the lowest priority will be marked as not synchronized and get subsequently blocked for the further read and write operations until the synchronization channel resumption. FreeNAS Some other solutions will act better with 2-node scenario, like StarWind VSAN or HPE VSA. The virtual SAN storage vendor to look at is Starwind https://www. Hello, I'm interested in playing around with Proxmox HA w/ Ceph for shared storage and I'm thinking Minisforum MS-01 would be a good candidate for my needs. Ok, 1st test done. Oct 28, 2024 · ↳ StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) [+Free], HCI Appliance (HCA), Virtual HCI Appliance (VHCA) [+Free] ↳ StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL) [+Free], VTL Appliance, Backup Appliance, Virtual Backup Appliance [+Free] ↳ StarWind V2V Converter, P2V Migrator; ↳ StarWind Tape Redirector; ↳ StarWind NVMe-oF Initiator [+Free], Deduplication Just do a 2+1 witness configuration. You'll need to set up a cluster and make use of CSVFS to fully benefit the VSAN. However, if one isn't doing HCI, I'd see about using hardware RAID, a NAS, anything than trying to make Windows do software RAID. Of course, no data protection will be available (since vSAN is not mirroring data inside the host). StarWind Appliance is a complex set of hardware components, software solutions, and services diligently packed into a single solution. Going to finally add three more hosts to the cluster and get out of this 2-node + witness shenanigans. Also for vSAN on each host you need at least one boot disk device (on a separate controller) and then you need a vSAN-certified disk controller that has all the SAS drives that will keep vSAN datastore data - plus at least one high endurance SSD drive for vSAN cache - per host. I’m looking for something like unraid with the apps and btrfs but free without having to configure something and hope for the best if there is a failure. I spent 3 weeks to in the Lab to install , configure, keep notes and monitoring performance 2 node HYPERV Failover Cluster with StarWind VSAN. g. You can also request a trial key to play around with GUI, BUT you will not be able to revert to free version without reinstalling the software afresh. Based off of a single cluster** Use case: listed in post vSAN Setup: RAID 1; 3 capacity drives per node with a total of 6 nodes Storage Size: 12tb (rapidly growing) with any single vm having no more than about 1tb. I believe they will also help you with migrating your setup. StarWind Virtual SAN has the following editions:Standard Edition: Intended for SMB’s and Remote Offices/BranchOffices (ROBO). Deployment on baremetal Windows servers or as virtual storage appliance on top of ESXi hosts. The missing locking is not great, but what really kills us are replication-problems. Full installation includes both StarWind Service and Management Console elements. StarWind, for example, will give you better performance, cause it reads from both nodes simultaneously. stormagic got some major financial struggles to focus on , just like pivot3 , so i wouldn’t put my bets on them as well . Set each host to boot the appliance VM first, once it's up (and the iSCSI targets are up and the storage is available) then continue booting the rest of the VMs. IMO VMware really dropped the ball with this one. scaleio is no more . Sep 13, 2011 · A free version of StarWind Virtual SAN® with unrestricted features and production use support for building hyper converged infrastructure solutions as well as SAN/NAS Storage. New features with StarWind VSAN for Hyper-V. But it can get into situations where it stops working, particularly if there is a sudden power loss or crash and things don't get shut down properly. Mar 2, 2021 · StarWind Virtual SAN Free is shipped with a set of ready-to-use PowerShell scripts that will help users to quickly deploy the Virtual SAN infrastructure and configure most of its features. I recommend contacting their support team for the optimal configuration for your scenario—they're known for being helpful. ). you can do direct connect fiber on the nodes and youre' done. Me being naive, didn't realise that this meant that the GUI management console locks up and you can't right click on any of the HA devices any more. Moreover, any StarWind Free user is allowed to modify existing scripts, create new ones, and share them with others. If it works for you, just try using StarWind VSAN (free or paid version). I think for homelab it suits perfectly since does not require a third host. . It goes against the whole design criteria. I will preface with I have setup and managed a Starwind setup for 7yrs now. Starwind can do this, but depending on the deployment model (Free vs Paid, for example) you may have to pass through your drives to the OVA's to get working storage. Anybody here uses vsan from starwind with esxi 8 Do you run 2 or 3 node setup? How is your experience with it? Have you tried vmware vsan and moved to starwind I'm thinking of switching my homelab from vmware vsan 3 node to starwind vsan 2 node directly linked instead of via my switch. Else you can spin up ZFS with cache/ZIL and layer QCOWs in that pool for the vSAN OVA's. My two cents for vSANs. Looking at using VSAN for a home grown 2 node cluster for failover with Hyper-V. We use only pre-tested hardware parts with a specific firmware to ensure the best compatibility, stability, and performance. Feb 7, 2023 · https://hcmonitor:9676/dashboard Hi, I have been using vSAN Free and Hyper-V Cluster for about 3 years now, and just decided to rebuild the Hyper-V cluster. Management is a little rudimentary though without the GUI. These include Software-Defined Storage solutions, HyperConverged and Storage Appliances designed to build high-performing, flexible and resilient IT infrastructures. Down the road, I want to do a similar setup for a file store; but the file store is a basically a write-once type of setup (the files aren't directly accessed by any users, they are written out by an application. On my laptop I am running 2 Hyper-V Server 2019 as VM's , which I manage to install Starwind vSAN successfully, with a free license. If at least one heartbeat link is online, StarWind services can communicate with each other via this link. This way you can make yourself familiar with some basic concepts. Add NAS to VMware ESXi. This is a subtle change. After you have your setup live and run into any issues this will make torubleshooting alot easier. com Replace your hardware with software that eliminates the need for physical shared storage — StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN) for Enterprise ROBO, SMB & Edge Just set up the vSAN as single site (or single fault domain or whatever the first option in the wizard is) and it will figure everything out by itself. Sep 19, 2019 · Select the following components for the minimum setup: StarWind Virtual SAN Service. If a node fails, vmware ha kicks in and restarts the vm's, just like vsan would so no difference there. I am running StarWind vSAN in a small test lab environment and have just discovered the 30 day trial on my free license has run out. If we get to the point of having HA & DRS, resilience multipath that doesn't take fortnight to set up, I'd be ready to move it into the data center. I have found many guides regarding settings up Starwind vSAN on ESXi and Windows Server OS, but almost nothing regarding vSAN with Free license and Hyper-V Server (2016 nor 2019). The StarWind Virtual SAN service is the “core” of the software. The first one is rather complete but uses a "StarWind on Windows VM" approach where the second one only talks about setting up the appliance. StarWind vSAN is completely hardware agnostic. In this subreddit, we share our knowledge and experience with you. Mar 13, 2018 · I tested my environment during the 30 day trial and really liked it but now I want to make it work with the free version. Starwind VSAN is a reliable product, and I can say this as we have several customers who are running it. 11. Does anyone have a procedure to configure the free version to create windows failover cluster using all local storage and StarWind to simulate a shared disk? You can get StarWind VSAN Free for your own hardware. vSAN makes sense with 5+ nodes Instead, look somewhere else: OmniOS with napp-it. It provides ZFS and Linux software RAID which can be exposed over iSCSI LUNs, NFS, and SMB shares. This involves: Very excellent. A reddit dedicated to the profession of Computer System Administration. You can use direct connect 10GbE cables between the two VSAN nodes on a dedicated 'vsan network', and use the third host as a 'witness' using your 1GbE management network. VM, HA, CEPH & MGMT vlans To achieve HCI similar to vSAN, the HBA was put into direct mode and CEPH was configured across all 5 nodes to get redundant converged storage. (And as a Linux admin I got to hate Microsoft more and more over the past years). In a production environment I'd pay for StarWind or VMware vSAN. Gave each one 3 32GB vdisks also on the vsan datastore. Note that you can still monitor storage status from the GUI. It is a free version of StarWind Virtual SAN that eliminates need in physical shared storage. I actually had an amazing experience with StarWind's vSAN ~ 3 years ago. the only reason to use iscsi is if you want to learn how to manage cluster shared volumes (in the microsoft world at least) if you have a nas, use SMB, that's what it's optimized for, the bottle neck will be the drives and interface, not the transfer protocol. Some additional context on my setup and needs: They have a couple of very good white papers explaining the setup: 2-Node setup for VMware 6. Nutanix Community Edition. If you are looking for Free virtual san storage software, the StarWind Virtual SAN free solution along with the StarWind SAN and NAS are both excellent products that I use extensively in the home lab environment and in production use cases for edge deployments and ROBO installation to create robust SAN and NAS infrastructure without buying expensive SAN and NAS hardware. It's lovely, and they each have their pro's and con's. Note: I know Starwind has a free version, but I want the GUI. Performance is not going to be good in a two-node scenario. I understand the basic of vSAN but I'm having a hard time understanding how it would work on my current setup. Goal: to have a high availability server solution current setup: 2 esxi hosts in a cluster with a 3rd one providing a virtual disk as it's "HA" storage, and an unused MD1420(but already attached to host 1) Any way to download Starwind vSan Free without corp email? Solved I wanted to try Starwind vSan in my homelab, but they require to enter a corp email, the form reject all public email provider. Get an ad-free experience with special benefits, and directly I would really recommend getting another disk to the host and installing StarWind vSAN free, you can then configure both disks to be iSCSI targets with no investment at all :) You can then also configure caching on devices in order to squeeze even more performance out of your drives. It takes a bit of care and feeding to setup correctly, but I'm a glutton for punishment. Sorry for the delay. Hey Folks, I am looking to play around with vVOL's on my vSphere 7 home lab and was hoping you guys can offer some suggestions on free vVOL solutions (or trial) that I can deploy via an OVA and add a capacity tier drive for testing. Nutanix Community Edition also is good, but you need RAM(around 32GB per host) plus CE only supports Acropolis(AHV). Unlike most kinds of replication, this setup makes sure you have a complete and consistent copy of data on each host participating in the cluster. On the contrary, StarWind VSAN was my perfect pick. , VMware vSAN, StarWind vSAN, StoreMagic, etc. Of all the software RAID or HCI programs for Windows, StarWinds vSAN is best of breed. It replicates the storage between hosts (or VMs) and presents it as an iSCSI target. StarWind Virtual SAN Free is a full-fledged production platform offering all the features of nope vSAN is commonly thought of as the cheap option for shared storage but it really isn't. I may just scrap the vsan and just create local datastores instead perfomances was way better. We setup proxmox for the following. starwindsoftware. Fixing those is nerve racking because you'll mess up both hosts and all your VMs if you screw things up. The way I read it, is the two supermicro's are actually using the iscsi volume as presented by the synologies and use the starwind vsan sofware to replicate the data between both synologies and due to its active-active approach can do access it on both synologies at the same time unlike the synology HA setup which only uses an active-passive approach, so you'd only be dealing with one Well, I had hard time configuring Windows native iSCSI target server once. As already mentioned by other Redditors in this thread, Starwind VSAN does real-time mirroring. Many questions arise in my thought process and I would need guidance on how to optimize my environment. Source - use starwind vSAN free in a live 2 node HA cluster. It’s deployed as a ready-to-go VM on top of VMware ESXi or Microsoft Hyper-V or directly onto bare metal from an ISO image, pooling all your storage resources and creating a hardware compatibility list (HCL) certified high-performing storage appliance. 5" (LFF) drives. 7 and above requires that the witness host be running as a VM in v Set up a dedicated virtual network, run some sort of iSCSI target in a VM (TrueNAS or Openfiler will do), and run a second virtual machine as the initiator that connects to the target. I wouldn't bother with VXRail, much better to just go with VSAN Ready Nodes. The second is that with the HCA you benefit having proactive support that covers the entire cluster (hardware and software) over just a VSAN support. However, this may better align with where StarWind is taking the product. Should I keep my 70TB in Raid 5 and use it with vSAN? It is often considered a solution that might have a smoother out-of-the-box experience compared to a more configurable but potentially more complex Ceph setup. If you do not need those, get yourself the hardware of preference and StarWind VSAN Free. Certainly, for production environment NUCs and standalone SSDs are bad options. iSCSI is fine too, but usually more complicated to setup and do things like multipathing properly in your hypervisor. Created 3 OSD on each proxmox node. Jun 1, 2021 · It was previously StarWind Free NAS & SAN. TL;DR: Should I run vSphere + vSAN on a 4-node SFF cluster, use some other platform, or just give up on hyperconverged storage? I picked up four Lenovo M910s SFF (not USFF) last year with the intention of building a small vSAN cluster, but got distracted with a new house; I'm finally getting back to doing something with them and am questioning whether I should go in another direction. As a follow-on to this post I'm setting up a Starwind VSAN setup but I'm not sure on the network configuration. Over the multiple times of deploying the Windows and Linux based solutions, we've managed to find a work around in using scripts from a Windows machine with the Management Console installed For example, I'm working on a 3 node VSAN Horizon cluster today. Can anyone help? I have 2 servers which I want to use as a starwind (free) server and then run windows File Share Clustered Services on top of this on the same 2 physical boxes. Reply reply Deployed Starwind vsan for several customers on VMware and it works solid for years. Except your doc specifically states migration/replication features are not available in NFS 4. if you are open to any other vsan solutions, you can consider Starwind VSAN free. I started over and followed these walk-through from Starwind Creating HA Device with StarWind Virtual SAN Free and StarWind Virtual SAN Hyper-Converged 3 Nodes Scenario with Hyper-V Cluster Actually, StarWind HCA is not a DELL (or another vendor) with StarWind VSAN on top. From many recommendations on this forum, Starwind’s vSAN seems to be the way to go and that was my first inquiry. I’m interested in testing the free version, but all the documentation I can find suggested using the GUI which I understand is not free. It creates a target and you can connect it in iSCSI initiator pretty much like this (move to step Installing StarWind VSAN for Hyper-V): We tried to build 2 nodes VMware VSAN and found it to be overkill - the pricing is high and you have to invest in the hardware as well. I looked into the Starwind HCA turnkey solution, and it is terrific, and I would say very fairly priced. been running 4 esx nodes in prod for 3 years, 200 vm's, erp, vdi (citrix), ad, sql, exch, etc, etc. Can I run an iSCSI target from Windows 10? Yes, you can run it using Starwind vsan free. vsan needs a dedicated storage switch, starwind does not. 5GbE should do the job, in case you don't need the fastest possible performance. I cannot recommend single node vSAN, but as far as I remember, you should be able to create a single-node cluster and deploy vSAN there. The reason is simply that maintaining physical SAN is easier than maintaining a hyperconverged infra. Works just fine for setup of simple configurations. Is Starwind worth paying the premium for? We are also considering VMware vSAN but I prefer not to give VMware money if possible. A simpler solution might be an R730XD in the 12 bay LFF configuration, and adding the 4 drive midplane module, allowing for 16 3. We like their decent product and the very helpful support team. For example, Starwind VSAN does not need a witness node. We have a lot of customers who run it. com/resour e-vs-paid/. For instance, Starwind vsan using an additional heartbeat channel and the split-brain is not a case since it could setup a lot of heartbeats, so even the physical card issue will not affect the data consistency. They provide all the sample scripts to interact with their API. vSAN was easy to set up with 3 nodes. - no witness is required. Definitely not FOSS, but still free. Firewalla is dedicated to making accessible cybersecurity solutions that are simple, affordable, and powerful. I also had a great experience with their support. For a two-nodes environment consider Starwind VSAN as it was mentioned before. I can not find their guide to deploy SOFS on Windows Sever 2016 or 2019, but that should not have a lot of difference: After a catastrophic failure, there was a massive desync on our vSAN. Finally i publish all the results from the beginning. My goal is to get another NUC and also a small SAN and upgrade my hub to a switch so I can setup VLANs, plus VSAN. https://www. I'm convinced the free version works, but I kept hitting walls: "the free version no longer supports this & that so you have to run a script and modify it" then I was getting all sorts of errors that I spent hours googling. You might need to do some esxcli magic to configure vsan 'witness traffic' apart from 'vsan replication traffic'. Also, if you have Windows Server Datacenter with SA, Azure Stack HCI is now free. It works on 2 hosts due to heartbeat design. I spend 3 weeks to install , configure and setup the Starwind VSAN with 2 Nodes HYPER-V Failover Clusters. StarWind VSAN secures high availability of storage and minimal downtime for VMs, it provides active-active replication with zero RPO and automatic failover. Greetings homelabbers. Furthermore if you are running vSAN in production you MUST make sure all components are on the vSAN hardware compatibility list to work properly. Alternatively, you can consider Starwind VSAN, which replicates storage between 2 or 3 nodes and presents it via iSCSI. Read about StarWind Virtual SAN Installer Components on the link below: StarWind Virtual SAN Installer Components; 10. QuantaStor Virtual Storage Appliance. After some demo calls, they went with Starwind. For shared storage, I'd use vSAN (e. datacore. A few years ago, if you wanted to use Starwind's free vsan product, you could only use the Windows VM deployment, forcing you to buy Windows licenses and such. Have some question first for the lab, and then, for small production. Fair enough, lol. dell rebranded it to flex os and made it sort of a paid add-on to dell servers around 2018 afaik , it’s called powerflex now and you don’t have any separate sku still . Similar to having a VM, Vmotion and vSan vlans all on their own 10 gig backbones. I'm trying to work out a few details before pulling the trigger. com Especially since they sell hardware with their vsan, for a single support vendor. It is no different from the commercial version for 30 days, just enough for learning what it is. My 2-node setup used the virtual appliances coupled with a free license. I have 6 NICs (1Gbe each) in each server. Also explored Starwind vSAN free and decided against it for licensing reasons. Im looking for ZFS combined with support for NVME over Roce. It will give you shared storage for Hyper-Converged servers. I use Starwind vSAN in a vSphere 8 Essentials environment. Our smart firewalls enable you to shield your business, manage kids' and employees' online activity, safely access the Internet while traveling, securely work from home, and more. Right now, they're satisfied. If you want to switch from Hyper-V, just change the hypervisor and continue with Starwind to do its job with storage replication. Let’s look at the process to Add NAS to VMware ESXi using the new StarWind SAN & NAS Free product. Thanks! I'm trying to set up a two node vSAN in my homelab, and while I have a working solution using the vSAN witness appliance on a third machine, I'd like to give using a Raspberry Pi 4 a try. But we chose 3rd party solution – Starwind vsan, because of following reasons: - it doesn’t require “certified” hardware, so we can scale-up or add more nodes in cost-efficient way. On the other hand, Ceph is a mature solution that works well for configurations with 4 or more storage nodes. You should have at least 2 x 1 GbE (10GbE preferred) connections between NUCs for storage traffic. This is when I had the idea to setup vSAN on my homelab environment. As an alternative I mentioned, you could use Starwind VSAN to make a 3-node cluster that has HA VM storage on just two storage nodes that are have data mirrored. StarWind develops versatile solutions to ensure smooth virtualization. This is a 2 node HA Cluster on Windows Server 2016, with a 6TB Starwind vSAN. What are you using and what do you like/dislike about the product? Anyone use starwind's virtual SAN product? We got a customer who's a bank with around 50 branches in the area. However, there are solutions that could do the HA storage without the third witness node. Starwind VSAN works really well 95% of the time. Alternatively, for a 2- and 3-node cluster, our customers exploit Starwind VSAN, which is a solid solution for small clusters. Starwind VSAN Free Comparison - The free license lets you use all included features, but support is limited to their forums, and you'll need to use their Powershell scripts to set everything up and manage the deployment (you can still use the Management GUI to monitor everything but actions are done with scripts). As mentioned, Starwind is a cheaper alternative to it. It has been working relatively flawlessly up until this point. Last time I checked, the VSAN itself is free, but the UI only runs for 30 or so days. The latest version of StarWind VSAN for Hyper-V was released on October 13, 2021. The Shared volume broke once the sync caused problems, as expected when the iSCSI connector went offline. Unfortunately, their cost is on the higher-end of our budget, and if possible, we’d like some other recommendations the community may have. Alternatively, you can consider other VSAN options. Spun up 3 proxmox 7. If you use the GUI you get a trail license which does not revert to free after 30 days. People say the performance flys. Specify the Start Menu I have got a i7 laptop with 32GB of mem with ESXi 6. vmware is pushing vsan concept and it’s getting more and more attractive ! StarWind SAN & NAS Free leverages the benefits of three of your favorites: StarWind VSAN, ZFS, and Linux. Hi telecode101, and thank you for your interest in our product. I remember reading performance benchmarks back in my vmware administration days (2008-2013 ish) and it was always neck-and-neck. We are working hard to improve our products. Virtualization becomes easier with StarWind solutions. You'd just have to present the LUNs using your normal means (iSCSI, Fiber channel, etc. Moreover, StarWind is somehow lack of functionalities. The article describe step by step how to install and configure a HYPERV Failover Cluster with Starwind VSAN. The service can be managed from StarWind Management Console on any Windows computer that is on the same network. To be fair to starwind the free version has a gui that works properly for 30 days then falls back into a read only mode. This solution offers the ability to easily provision an enterprise NAS or SAN in your vSphere environment for free. The redundancy is built into the design of vSAN not into the hardware raid. Keep your data safe from any threats with StarWind VSAN. Now, the product is StarWind SAN & NAS Free. It seems as though Starwind Vsan fits the bill plus offers cluster failover AND is free for home lab users. Then add MD1200's as needed. storage and network configurations, the networking should be RDMA, the storage controller needs to be an HBA card in IT mode (passthrough). From the downloads I've seen, ESX v6. This approach is definitely doable. Indeed, 10GbE is the preferable route, but in regards to your storage configuration, 2. So I removed vSAN and rebuilt both machines. Hypothetically, I'd set it up on 3 Nodes and assign a 1TB NVME to it on each host - Would I be passing the raw PCIE directpath IO NVME object through to the VM or mapping it as a datastore? - Is the Free version aware of node maintenance mode, etc. StarWind Virtual SAN Free. Feb 22, 2024 · Learn how to set up and use StarWind VSAN as a hardened repository for Veeam Backup and Replication. I have a 1TB SSD on each node I can dedicate to starwind vSAN 100TB+ Home Media Setup The u/BorysTheBlazer community on Reddit. Their support team is helpful with all kinds of questions. I'd love a 3 SCALE nodes cluster ideally and already wonder if it'd be safe for each individual node to have only 1 disk for storage (I guess bye bye scrubs unless I set it up with copies=2 losing 50% space). Aug 22, 2022 · Wrapping Up. So I can use one esxi host standalone for backup. We have a VSAN cluster and an AzSHCI cluster and the Microsoft cluster has over double the IOPS performance on similar hardware. The non-GUI Windows Server version is free. - easy setup and maintenance, especially with starwind support - great performance, if configured correctly - the cluster can consist only of two nodes without witness - actually, we haven't got any major problems with starwind storage Cons: - no storage autotiering in starwind linux appliance Nov 2, 2021 · However, with the proprietary technology built into the StarWind VSAN solution, StarWind is able to provide quorum with a simple two-node setup, if only one node remains online. I am trying to buy some mini PC to make it happen. Deployment of StarWind vSAN Appliance. I’m also going to setup PFsense as VM or buy HW and use as my Layer 3 device, firewall and VPN. This isn't a path for lazy behavior, you need to be anal about testing and results. VEEAM CDP is more disaster recovery solution with near zero RPO and manual failover. Once you configure your cluster, enable vSAN, set up your disks the way you want and it's done. It is possible to set up a two node cluster but you will also need an independent NAS to host the VM's; and it's not advisable to run a 2 node cluster, split-brain cluster issues are very real and almost non-recoverable from. Starwind VSAN Free - I actually got it installed, but the nodes were crashing during sync. And was planning to Dec 6, 2020 · StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is installed on the ESXi server; StarWind Virtual SAN must be installed on a separate storage device available to the ESXi host (e. I dont have a 3rd for a witness for vsan, so I was debating about using truenas scale on each host as a guest vm and then replicating the storage between the two and thus presenting it to each host as an iscsi datastore. You need to know your hardware and have it tuned 100% before putting Starwind on it. I wrote an article which describe step by step from scratch every step that must follow. There are few Locations (we’re outsourced IT for booking offices) and budget is tiny. if vsan, add $10K for a switch they'll rec'd on their HCL (broadcomm, cisco, hpe, etc). 5. I don’t recall changing anything at all with the two vSAN nodes, but the newly rebuilt Hyper-V Cluster nodes could not connect to iSCSI, (I kept getting a licence error). It works either as a Linux or Windows Server VM and presents storage via iSCSI. Maybe time to evaluate Starwind VSAN solution (which will let me even get away with just 2 nodes). I'm looking for something that offers great performance, reliability, and is relatively easy to manage, considering it's a home lab environment. " systems that are typically installed on top of a set of Windows servers), but never having deployed it into production myself, my opinion probably isn't worth much in the end. 1 These aren't native NFS features indeed, what you do you configure a WFC or guest VM cluster if you're on Hyper-V side, put your shared content right on top of your CSV (or shared VHDX put on top of your CSV which is irrelevant) and you're golden. Is anyone running a 2-node or 3-node hyper-v cluster using Starwind VSAN? We are looking to go more "highly available" with our setup when hardware refresh comes around next year. Click Next to continue. I'm looking to build a few cheap 2-node HA ESXi clusters, and I was looking at Starwind again. vSAN doesn't. StarWind Virtual SAN Free allows creating a fault tolerant and high performing storage pool by mirroring existing server’s internal storage between nodes. The first concern I have is that the StarWind HCA price probably would be less than 2 nodes + 2 DAS + VSAN as it is the lower footprint. They were choosing between VXRail, Nutanix, and Starwind HCA. In particular, we’ll post here blog ↳ StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) [+Free], HCI Appliance (HCA), Virtual HCI Appliance (VHCA) [+Free] ↳ StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL) [+Free], VTL Appliance, Backup Appliance, Virtual Backup Appliance [+Free] ↳ StarWind V2V Converter, P2V Migrator; ↳ StarWind Tape Redirector; ↳ StarWind NVMe-oF Initiator [+Free], Deduplication Have a look at StarWind Virtual SAN Free edition. They initially marketed it as a low-cost SMB solution to having shared storage but they priced it waaayyyy out to lunch. I could write a novel but for each of ours have a different use case. Starwind virtual san has a free version that works as a dull storage dual node active/active configuration. Ceph is a great choice for a vSan type setup in proxmox. hi, I want to build HA cluster based on Proxmox and Ceph consisting of three nodes. SSD, HDD etc. It shouldn't be hard to use CLI only - there are shell scripts for everything but be careful that you understand what you are doing from the outset - things will go south rather quickly if you just read the documentation as you go along. 0u3 and running 2 vSAN clusters (4 hosts each cluster, with 2 in one data center, 2 in another data center, and 1 witness for each cluster, stretched cluster) using HP DL380 Gen10s for all vSAN hosts and Intel NUCs at a 3rd location for witnesses. vHCI is an Appliance and is bundled with additional services. The vmkernel interface (initially only vmk0) is an interface between the ESXi host and the VMs. I'm considering ditching my FreeNAS SAN and am wanting to run Starwind VSAN in lieu of vmware's inferior VSAN on my 3x ESXi cluster, even though I can get licensing for it. 2 windows vm's handle the storage connected via direct connect 40gb nics. Posted by u/orddie1 - 3 votes and 16 comments Since StarWind VSAN is a native windows application, its deployment withing a WS VM would definitely eliminate an additional virtual layer to the storage. you can definitively run lab HCI with VMware and StarWind vSAN on 2 Intel NUCs. Reddit gives you the best of the internet in one place. It allows for the resources management from the machine with StarWind Service installed. This is not a setup I recommend. Again, if you add a third node though. I am setting up a new homelab with 2 1u dell r630 servers. From reading other posts on reddit with even lower specs than my setup. In VMware vSAN architecture it is must be. vSAN is designed so you don’t need and in fact can’t use raid arrays. It replicates the storage between hosts and presents it as the iSCSI target. If you wanted to do any labbing of VMware you would need to run it nested. It makes the storage set up fast and allows to set network shares using the CLI tool. I'll leave out the SAN and just put in vSAN and nutanix. never an issue. Then setup your HA/Replication rules, connect to the CIM provider to your PVE cluster and done. Sep 14, 2024 · ↳ StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) [+Free], HCI Appliance (HCA), Virtual HCI Appliance (VHCA) [+Free] ↳ StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL) [+Free], VTL Appliance, Backup Appliance, Virtual Backup Appliance [+Free] ↳ StarWind V2V Converter, P2V Migrator; ↳ StarWind Tape Redirector; ↳ StarWind NVMe-oF Initiator [+Free], Deduplication Welcome to the official subreddit of the PC Master Race / PCMR! All PC-related content is welcome, including build help, tech support, and any doubt one might have about PC ownership. When the cluster was reduced to 2 hosts, it prevented writes to the VSAN datastore and caused the recompose to fail. Hey, Was thinking of using S2D for storage infrastructure, it looks pretty nice and I could rely more on Windows SMB shares than trying to fiddle with Samba Anybody uses Starwind vSAN for two-node ESXi clusters? I need to build two-node ESXi based SQL Server FCI setup and looking for inexpensive (free?) shared storage offering. I've got the pi configured with the latest ARM fling, as well as enabled two extra SSDs I had laying around for the cache and capacity tiers. We have a DFS-Setup with DFS-R replicating everything between two headquarters and a lot (>20) of smaller offices. jkjw ksgqfew dbeywb bjz pdfbr udrx eoz zwdbshm bkloo gwe