What is StarWind SAN?

What is StarWind SAN?

StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) is a software that eliminates any need for physical shared storage by simply “mirroring” internal hard disks and flash between hypervisor servers. It’s compatible with the hypervisor of your choice, be it Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere/ ESXi, Linux KVM, or Xen.

How to Configure StarWind Virtual SAN?

To install StarWind Virtual SAN:

1. Download the StarWind setup executable file from the StarWind website: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san.
2. Launch the downloaded executable setup file on the server that will be used as a SAN storage.
3. Read and accept the License Agreement.
4. Click Next to continue.

Is StarWind Vsan free?

StarWind VSAN Free comes with a set of ready-to-use PowerShell scripts that allow to quickly deploy the Virtual SAN infrastructure and configure most of its features. It must be noted that the Free version goes self-supported or community-supported at StarWind forums.

What is StarWind management console?

The Management Console is the Graphical User Interface (GUI) part of the program that monitors and controls the storage-related operations ( for example – creation of devices on the available target servers). After its installation, StarWind Management Console connects to StarWind Service remotely.

How do I make virtual SAN storage?

Create a Virtual SAN Cluster

1. Right-click a data center in the vSphere Web Client and select New Cluster.
2. Type a name for the cluster in the Name text box. This name appears in the vSphere Web Client navigator.
3. Select the vSAN Turn ON check box and click OK.
4. Add hosts to the Virtual SAN cluster.

What is virtual SAN Manager in Hyper V?

Hyper-V allows you to define virtual SANs on the host to accommodate scenarios where a single Hyper-V host is connected to different SANs through multiple Fibre Channel ports. A virtual SAN defines a named group of physical Fibre Channel ports that are connected to the same physical SAN.

Does Hyper-V have vSAN?

Support for virtual Fibre Channel in Hyper-V guests also includes support for many related features, such as virtual SANs (vSAN), live migration, quick migration, MPIO, Import and Export, Save and Restore, Pause and Resume, and guest initiated backups.

What components are virtualized SAN?

A virtual storage area network (SAN) is a software-based component that provides a virtualized ‘pool’ of storage to multiple virtual machines (VMs) and applications. In order to achieve this, data is passed (shared) between servers over a network using a protocol such as iSCSI or fibre channel.

What is SAN and VSAN?

A traditional storage area network is a dedicated high-speed network that partitions storage resources from a centralized storage array, whereas VMware’s software-defined virtual SAN — vSAN — logically pools storage resources across the servers in a network and runs on a vSphere hypervisor.

What is VMware VSAN?

VMware vSAN (formerly Virtual SAN) is a hyper-converged, software-defined storage (SDS) product developed by VMware that pools together direct-attached storage devices across a VMware vSphere cluster to create a distributed, shared data store.

What is Hyper-V virtual SAN?

Virtual SAN support Hyper-V allows you to define virtual SANs on the host to accommodate scenarios where a single Hyper-V host is connected to different SANs through multiple Fibre Channel ports. A virtual SAN defines a named group of physical Fibre Channel ports that are connected to the same physical SAN.

How do I activate my vSAN license?

Procedure

1. Navigate to your vSAN cluster.
2. Click the Configure tab.
3. Under Licensing, select vSAN Cluster.
4. Click Assign License.
5. Select an existing license and click OK.

What is a vSAN host?

VMware vSAN uses a software-defined approach that creates shared storage for virtual machines. It virtualizes the local physical storage resources of ESXi hosts and turns them into pools of storage that can be divided and assigned to virtual machines and applications according to their quality-of-service requirements.

What are the types of SAN virtualization?

It can be categorized into three types: host-based storage virtualization, storage device-based storage virtualization, and network-based storage virtualization.

What is a virtual SAN cluster?

Is Starwind Virtual SAN a better alternative to VMware VSAN?

However, even though the efficiency of the VMware vSAN solution is out of the question, in certain cases, StarWind Virtual SAN can come off as a more suitable alternative: StarWind VSAN was created to grant SMB, ROBO and Edge infrastructures constant uptime from the get-go.

How do I create a witness node in Starwind Virtual SAN?

It requires StarWind Virtual SAN service installed on it. NOTE: Since the device created in this guide is replicated between 2 active nodes with the Node Majority failover strategy, a Witness node must be added to it. 1. Open StarWind Management Console, right-click on the Servers field and press the Add Server button.

How does the Starwind Virtual SAN receive an IP address?

By default, the StarWind Virtual SAN virtual machine receives an IP address automatically via DHCP. It is recommended to create a DHCP reservation and set a static IP address for this VM.

How to enable iSCSI/Starwind Heartbeat on VMware ESXi?

Using VMware ESXi web console, create two standard vSwitches: one for the iSCSI/ StarWind Heartbeat channel (vSwitch1) and the other one for the Synchronization channel (vSwitch2). 2. Create a VMKernel port for the iSCSI/ StarWind Heartbeat channel. 3.