Starwind vSAN FREE edition for Hyper-V cluster?
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It means SAN, not VSAN.
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@scottalanmiller I'll probably wait for Starwind or Kooler to reply to clarify this.
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They were posting on here seconds ago. But any "deploy without hypervisor" means, by definition, it is SAN, not VSAN. That's not something they determine, it just is what it is.
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@LAH3385 said:
I was under the impression from multiple threads that I can use starwind vSAN FREE edition with Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 (Core). However, after reaching out to Starwind for their Free edition license they said that it cannot be sue with Hyper-V Server 2012 R2. "The free license cannot be installed inside a VM or on a server with Hyper-V role".
From this post: http://www.vladan.fr/install-free-starwind-san-free-hyper-v/
What did I missed?
My intention is to create a Hyper-V server 2012 R2 on Dell R430 (with dual/mirrored 32GB SD card). Then spin up a VM with Windows server 2012 R2 on it for file server. Using starwind vSAN to mirror both server storage partition.
- There's no point to spawn any VMs inside Hyper-V to run StarWind as StarWind is native Windows application (OK, a combination of a user-land service and set of kernel-mode drivers) and it installs itself into so-called "parent partition" where actual OS runs.
If you ABSOLUTELY want to run inside a VM you CAN do that but it's going to be SLOWER. MUCH slower because you'll route all iSCSI/TCP traffic over vSwitch and thru VMBus (hardware emulation layer done by Hyper-V). Running in a loopback inside "parent partition" StarWind does not do much of TCP and takes care of data locality for RAM (and flash) cache. But if you want VM - you'll get a VM! BTW, we do even ship pre-built VM-based appliance with StarWind inside so you don't even need to manually do any installations. <-- Pre-built Windows VM appliance is something VERY few companies can actually do! We've been one of the few to jump on this program bandwagon and MSFT does not accept any new members so far! Very rare and special opportunity
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There are multiple different versions of a free StarWind version. There's one EVERYBODY can get and what it does: spawns some Windows-based OS on a pair of physical x86 / x64 with any Windows OS (desktop will not work but free Hyper-V Server WILL work - you pay nothing for OS here!), install StarWind here and we'll build a dual-controller SAN. This SAN will lock iSCSI inside (we don't want it outside for management simplicity here) for synchronization and now depending on a requested version (Hyper-V Vs VMware) you'll get either failover NFS or failover SMB3 file server here (you can request both just sales will ask you WTF are you doing). NFS and SMB3 are very easy to manage from hypervisor point of view so it's very error-free way to go. <-- This is version EVERYBODY can get and it comes w/out any restrictions. Commercial use is OK, capacity is unlimited, time is unlimited, amount of consumers is unlimited. So this dual-controller failover NAS will serve N nodes for hypervisor, your file server clients etc.
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There's a HYPERCONVERGED version of StarWind. It installs into parent partition again or inside a VM (for Hyper-V and ESXi / vSphere accordingly) and you build with it a N-node cluster with storage being fault-tolerant and sitting on a 2 nodes. So 2 nodes keep storage for N. Not "just two node StarWind is free"! It's N. This version is iSCSI (kind of iSCSI for Hyper-V actually same way SMB Direct start as TCP and then goes RDMA we start as iSCSI and go DMA) but you can do SMB3 from a VM on Hyper-V and NFS from a VM on VMware (not recommended). This version is restricted and you have to be vExpert, MVP, MCT, MCP, blogger or whatever to get either time-unlimited or limited versions. You can also be Spiceworks user with level of Serrano and up and Mangolassi user with some points (we did not decide yet). Or... You just come and ask
So before we've been doing "two node hyper converged" version for free and not we can do "2 for N hyper converged", "2 for N node converged" but you specify your scenario and hypervisor. We're trying to be very flexible here so if you think we do something wrong and miss something obvious you just come and ask. We'll fix that.
Technically we're shifting focus to appliances so I'm pretty sure we'll end with completely unrestricted versions for N nodes in terms of storage but selling just hardware (ready nodes).
So what you did - got wrong license
I've dropped you PM asking for e-mail so Icould bring you in touch with StarWind PM who'll help with a key. The only thing you need is to describe what you do actually (hyper converged still will not allow to install itself into VM by default on Hyper-V as we don't like this in terms of mgmt and support, need a special key for that for EVERY kind of version).
Hope this makes sense
P.S. And SAM is 200% correct on naming. It's just difficult to have different names for everything so have to pick up how to confuse people.
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@scottalanmiller said:
They were posting on here seconds ago. But any "deploy without hypervisor" means, by definition, it is SAN, not VSAN. That's not something they determine, it just is what it is.
200% correct !!
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@scottalanmiller said:
No Thanksgiving holiday in the Ukraine.
We tend to celebrate everything including Voodoo holidays!
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I love how awesome our vendors are around here.
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Didn't saw any PM so just PMed KOOLER. Very detail explanation. I don't think I understand the whole thing either.
Thanks MangoLassi and Kooler. Will await for a reply. -
@LAH3385 said:
Didn't saw any PM so just PMed KOOLER. Very detail explanation. I don't think I understand the whole thing either.
Thanks MangoLassi and Kooler. Will await for a reply.Got. Responded. Please give Tolya a couple of hours for turnaround
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@Minion-Queen said:
I love how awesome our vendors are around here.
Doing our best to keep you guys and gals happy
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@KOOLER said:
@Minion-Queen said:
I love how awesome our vendors are around here.
Doing our best to keep you guys and gals happy
thanks!!
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@KOOLER said:
@Minion-Queen said:
I love how awesome our vendors are around here.
Doing our best to keep you guys and gals happy
Thank you!!!
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huh, cool to know there are several versions.
Sounds like another vendor I can think of
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They used to focus quite a lot of being an iSCSI replacement for Windows so that Windows could be turned into a very viable enterprise class SAN device. They still make the software but people think of SANs so differently today that they often automatically associate this with virtualization. But Starwind used to just make enterprise SAN server software for Windows. So that approach is a remnant of that. It's not actually associated with virtualization at all. If you want to just build a SAN on Windows, this is how you do it.
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After Kooler post.. I feel like what I know about vSAN is just a tip of an iceberg.
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@LAH3385 said:
After Kooler post.. I feel like what I know about vSAN is just a tip of an iceberg.
I have a strong feeling if you have to know a lot to make complex things work - user interface is actually broken. You don't know exactly (most people don't...) how internal combustion engine works but you drive you car every day. Storage should be no different. IMHO.
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@Dashrender said:
huh, cool to know there are several versions.
Sounds like another vendor I can think of
you're welcomed to join the party
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I'm definitely interested in trying out StarWinds vSAN, but I don't currently have anything to use it on.
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I received this error message. Should I be concerned? This occured during installing SGI-S agent
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@LAH3385 said:
I received this error message. Should I be concerned? This occured during installing SGI-S agent
This is SMI-S provider installer. It's needed only if you plan to control StarWind from Microsoft SCVMM. I don't think you want it so simply uncheck "SMI-S" option in installation wizard options.
I'll file a bug as installer has to run on a GUI-less version as well. Thanks for reporting
