Starwind VSAN Free restrictions removed

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NISMO1968

[ ... ]
Oct 19, 2013
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San Antonio, TX
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We use Linux version and HTML5 GUI for that. From what I know a) you can't orchestrate Linux VSA with a CLI (which kind of sucks, I love Chef/Ansible /Puppet thing), and b) they don't take away GUI for Linux version anytime soon (which is kind of cool).

Well, storage product is limited to storage, this is SO unexpected LOL.

The way I read it, you can fully administer the Starwind VSAN through CLI commands. That's totally different from for example vCenter (to me) - you simply can't cluster, use DVS switches, use NSX (and on and on and on...) without it. This is also a product limited to storage - a full WS2016 license gives you so much more than a VSAN.
 

marcoi

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2013
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Gotha Florida
anyone play with the linux version vm they released? I tried it briefly. It doesn't seem to let you do advance configuration of the storage devices. IE I can only mount each drive, not configure as raid 10 etc. Maybe I missed where to do the adv config?
 

NetWise

Active Member
Jun 29, 2012
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Edmonton, AB, Canada
anyone play with the linux version vm they released? I tried it briefly. It doesn't seem to let you do advance configuration of the storage devices. IE I can only mount each drive, not configure as raid 10 etc. Maybe I missed where to do the adv config?
Is the linux version supposed to? The Windows version doesn't do any sort of software RAID at all - it only passes through the disks you have - either as a full disk, a file on the disk, and then with or without caching via SSD/RAM.
 

marcoi

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2013
1,532
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Gotha Florida
Is the linux version supposed to? The Windows version doesn't do any sort of software RAID at all - it only passes through the disks you have - either as a full disk, a file on the disk, and then with or without caching via SSD/RAM.
that is why I'm trying to figure out haha.. I dont know if i can do anything at a lower OS level or not like i can do in windows. If I can do anything at an OS level that leaves using a raid card for back end storage then starwind linux app to share it out.

If i went with raid card setup, not sure what the best approach would be: setup datastores on the storage then create drives on the vm for linux to pass out vs just passing the whole card into the linux vm. My guess is they intended the first option.
 

ecosse

Active Member
Jul 2, 2013
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that is why I'm trying to figure out haha.. I dont know if i can do anything at a lower OS level or not like i can do in windows. If I can do anything at an OS level that leaves using a raid card for back end storage then starwind linux app to share it out.

If i went with raid card setup, not sure what the best approach would be: setup datastores on the storage then create drives on the vm for linux to pass out vs just passing the whole card into the linux vm. My guess is they intended the first option.
I've not used Starwind VSAN but the point of a VSAN is that it handles the disk RAID - you just throw it the RAW disk, the RAW'er the better :) (there were some issues on VMware VSAN if you used RAID-0 on some RAID cards so a dumb HBA was a better choice)

I assume the Linux VM is just the admin piece but completely guessing here...
 
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vl1969

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Feb 5, 2014
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I've not used Starwind VSA but the point of a VSA is that it handles the disk RAID - you just throw it the RAW disk, the RAW'er the better :) (there were some issues on VMware VSAN if you used RAID-0 on some RAID cards so a dumb HBA was a better choice)

I assume the Linux VM is just the admin piece but completely guessing here...
I am not sure but isn't the point of Starwind VSAN is to raid the disks between servers, not within single server?

that is how I am using it at work.
I do not think it can raid the disks within single server.
 

marcoi

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2013
1,532
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Gotha Florida
I am not sure but isn't the point of Starwind VSAN is to raid the disks between servers, not within single server?

that is how I am using it at work.
I do not think it can raid the disks within single server.
I think that sounds about right, from what i understood about it. I might put it on two/three nodes at home and test how that aspect of it works.
 

NetWise

Active Member
Jun 29, 2012
596
133
43
Edmonton, AB, Canada
I've not used Starwind VSA but the point of a VSA is that it handles the disk RAID - you just throw it the RAW disk, the RAW'er the better :) (there were some issues on VMware VSAN if you used RAID-0 on some RAID cards so a dumb HBA was a better choice)

I assume the Linux VM is just the admin piece but completely guessing here...
Perhaps with SOME VSA's, but not the ones I've used. You would typically present it out with VMDK's and it would present that out as storage. You may have used ones that work the way you describe - I know they exist, so I'm not debating that. But most I've done, haven't been.

I am not sure but isn't the point of Starwind VSAN is to raid the disks between servers, not within single server?

that is how I am using it at work.
I do not think it can raid the disks within single server.
I don't know that I would think of, nor refer to it, as "RAID between servers". Starwind VSAN gets you a virtual SAN - NFS, ISCSI, SMB3, etc. You share out your volume to the hosts. You can additionally make it HA by creating a replication partner, so that if one node fails, you're still up. In some ways, that may be similar to a RAID1 mirror between hosts. But you can have a synchronous or an asynchronous lagged node somewhere else as well.

The VSA is just a Linux version of the Windows software. The VSA is the management/OS disk. You add disks (VMDK/VHDX/RAW) to the VM as needed. You then configure the disk inside of the OS to be shared out to ISCSI or other initiators. You configure that disk, with some SSD cache - by way of adding a VMDK disk that resides on a local SSD disk, or some RAM cache. That SSD could be standalone, could be PCIe, could be mirrored, could be a single disk RAID0, whatever. If it's like the Windows one, it only needs one disk/volume/partition, and it places a cache file of 4-8-32GB whatever you configured, on it, and attaches/combines it with the main "HDD" disk.

So you'd spin up the VSA, give it a 2TB VMDK, and a 128GB SSD based VMDK, and 24GB RAM. You could then make two LUN's with it of 1TB each - one might have 8GB SSD cache and 4GB RAM, the other might have 96GB SSD and 12GB RAM. But it would appear as 2x 1TB LUN's to anything that's accessing it.
 

ecosse

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Jul 2, 2013
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To be honest, there is a schooboy error in my reply. VSAN does not equal VSA. :) Serves me right for replying between calls :) Add a "N" to my acronyms to make sense!!
 

vl1969

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Feb 5, 2014
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that is not how I see it work.
I am running a Starwind VSAN now with my hyper-v cluster server.
we are small shop, and not a tech heavy to boot. IT is a second to the business, so not much of an IT budget or management. I am it :) .
had a problem 2 years back which prompted a main server replacement , while that was happening a question of uptime came up so an idea to run a 2 node hyper-v cluster whent on the table. got approval and all but no budget for an external shared storage san/nas.

set up all using ther 2 DELL PowerEdge R730xd with 2x200GB ssd for windows server 2012 r2 hyper-v setup
and 4x2TB HHD in raid-10

starwind require the space on existing mounted drive to work. so it does not manage any drives itself.
it creates a virtual device on the space provided based on your setup and than you configure the iSCSI targets for replication between 2 or more servers based on the licensed. as I run free I only have 2 servers(nodes) to work with. so I think I got it right. StarWind VSAN in a nutshell mirrors/replicates a virtual pool between 2 or more hardware servers and allow you to setup a share on each node presenting the SW volumes as shared drives as well.
 

ecosse

Active Member
Jul 2, 2013
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Not sure who you are replying to but I'll give you my example. I run three types of block storage in my home server
Local - local traditional RAID or DASD disks
HP VSA - traditional RAID consumed by VSA to offer out as an ISCSI target
VSAN - DASD storage claimed by VMware in each server to form a virtual drive across the servers

Are you saying that Starwind VSAN is different to nos 3 - it doesn't sound like it from what you've written?
 

vl1969

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Feb 5, 2014
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I am not sure how other vsa work. This is the first one I ever used.
The way star wind van works is, as I described, it takes a formated volume, either a disk or raid array, puts an image file like a virtual disk on it and allows you to use that as an issue source/target that you can than share
It also setups a replication between 2 or more servers where sw is installed using the iscsi to replicate all data between the servers. So you end up with a copy of data on each of the nodes. With in a cluster you can use this volumes as cluster fs formated disks and data is available on any of the nodes in a cluster as if it was a shared storage setup, but the data is actually exists and replicated on each node.

Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
 

ecosse

Active Member
Jul 2, 2013
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This is the perils of using a phone :) As you said earlier you are using a VSAN not a VSA. They are two completely different philosophies.
 

vl1969

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Feb 5, 2014
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VSAN not a VSA. They are two completely different philosophies
would you mind to elaborate?

I thought that VSA was just a preconfigured StarWind VSAN in virtual machine. an appliance VM for an easier deployment, at least that is what all the docs would let you to believe.
what is the difference?
 

ecosse

Active Member
Jul 2, 2013
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would you mind to elaborate?

I thought that VSA was just a preconfigured StarWind VSAN in virtual machine. an appliance VM for an easier deployment, at least that is what all the docs would let you to believe.
what is the difference?
No worries, although feel free to challenge if you (or anyone else!) think I have it wrong. and I'm not certain that the terminology the storage industry uses is particularly "canon" in this area which doesn't help! Below is VMware's comparison of their VSA and VSAN technology. It doesn't hold true for all VSA's (or perhaps VSANs for that matter) but its a useful start to pick out a few areas:

Comparing VMware VSA & VMware Virtual SAN - VMware vSphere Blog

Storage scale - typically VSA's will be smaller scale. VSA's are using local disks to create their volume so they would be limited to the disk slots you have in a local chassis (I guess you can chain chassis if you really wanted to but I wouldn't have thought this was common).
Node scale - VSA's don't typically scale that far - the VMware VSA scales to 3 nodes - the HP VSA can do more (the design document shows a 4 node cluster) but they aren't in the same league as a VSAN - VMware VSAN is 64 nodes, ScaleIO max cluster size is 1024 nodes.
Data Protection: Whilst some VSA's can do limited network raid (so for example a mirror or a RAID-5 between servers), they typically rely on a RAID card to provide the underlying disk resilience at the local server. VSANs do not use a RAID card as you know, they calculate the workload position themselves to ensure that in the event of a loss of a single node the data is still there. In VMware VSAN you have similar choices around RAID protection levels but the parity calc is done in software not hardware. Considering the scale these can get to, there is a "new" method of data protection called Erasure Encoding which affords a quicker recovery from a failure than traditional RAID at the possible expense of performance.

I guess in summary I would say that a VSAN is designed to replace traditional SAN technology (EMC VNX / IBM V7000's for example), - there are still limitations but these are reducing as the technology advances (e.g. encryption at rest, physical access to a VSAN volume). VSA's in my eyes were always a small / medium business thing or for a specific use case.
 
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NISMO1968

[ ... ]
Oct 19, 2013
87
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San Antonio, TX
www.vmware.com
Well, you know if you use hardware pass-thru or SR-IOV for NICs and NVMe, and assign dedicated CPU cores to poll I/O it doesn't really matter are you inside the kernel or inside a VM.

TL;DR: A line in sand in between of a VSA and VSAN is getting more and more blurred these days. IMHO.

[ ... ]

I guess in summary I would say that a VSAN is designed to replace traditional SAN technology (EMC VNX / IBM V7000's for example), - there are still limitations but these are reducing as the technology advances (e.g. encryption at rest, physical access to a VSAN volume). VSA's in my eyes were always a small / medium business thing or for a specific use case.