Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5
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StarWind Virtual SAN Free allows deploying a 2-node cluster providing a highly available storage for your virtual machines to Hyper-V or ESXi hypervisor for free. When deploying multi VSAN Free nodes, the data is synchronized across the network between the nodes. StarWind VSAN Free can be deployed in a hyperconverged model where VSAN Free is installed on hypervisor nodes or in a disaggregated model with separated compute and storage resources. StarWind VSAN Free management capabilities include PowerShell, with StarWind Management console available as a 30-day trial.Read the full article by Romain Serre, a Senior Consultant at Lyon to learn how to deploy a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5 on Windows Server 2016 Core Edition.
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I decided it worth providing a direct URL for the source...
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-free
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Do the nodes need to be identical?
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@hobbit666 said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5:
Do the nodes need to be identical?
Tagging some peeps... @StarWind_Software @Stuka @ABykovskyi @TheDeepStorage @Oles-Borys @LaMerk @Oksana
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@hobbit666 said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5:
Do the nodes need to be identical?
According to our best practises-yes. Since the hosts are used in an active-active scenario, having one of the nodes slower than the other will have several significant consequences:
-You will have delays for all the operations. Reads are performed from both hosts and writes are done on both nodes as well, using round-robin. If one of the nodes is the bottleneck, you will see latency and a considerably lower I/O overall
-If one the faster host fails, all your environment will failover to the slower node and chances are high it will not be able to handle itSo in short, you CAN use non-identical nodes, but that doesn't mean you should.
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@TheDeepStorage what about if the performance is basically the same but the capacities are different in different tiers, how does the system react?
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@TheDeepStorage said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5:
According to our best practises-yes. Since the hosts are used in an active-active scenario, having one of the nodes slower than the other will have several significant consequences:
....Important way to think about it... this is network RAID, not RAIN. Network RAID is still RAID, and the rules of RAID still apply.
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@scottalanmiller said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5:
@TheDeepStorage what about if the performance is basically the same but the capacities are different in different tiers, how does the system react?
Scott, as long as the RAID arrays that are the underlying storage for the StarWind image files, as well as the image files themselves are identical, then you should be fine.
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Thanks just that I might have some kit becoming available but they are all different Dell models, just wondered if the Hard Drive space/RAID matched that would be OK for a test lab,
e.g.
R610, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SAS
R410, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SAS -
@hobbit666 said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5:
Thanks just that I might have some kit becoming available but they are all different Dell models, just wondered if the Hard Drive space/RAID matched that would be OK for a test lab,
e.g.
R610, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SAS
R410, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SASSounds like that will be fine. Might even be the controller!
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@hobbit666 said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5:
Thanks just that I might have some kit becoming available but they are all different Dell models, just wondered if the Hard Drive space/RAID matched that would be OK for a test lab,
e.g.
R610, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SAS
R410, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SASSounds like it will work just fine for a test lab, anyways, once you get down to testing, DM me and I'll get you in touch with an engineer, who will review your environment to make sure everything will work perfectly.
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@TheDeepStorage said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5:
@hobbit666 said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5:
Thanks just that I might have some kit becoming available but they are all different Dell models, just wondered if the Hard Drive space/RAID matched that would be OK for a test lab,
e.g.
R610, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SAS
R410, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SASSounds like it will work just fine for a test lab, anyways, once you get down to testing, DM me and I'll get you in touch with an engineer, who will review your environment to make sure everything will work perfectly.
See now I want to purchase more lab equipment to test this. . . .
