What is StarWind vSAN?
StarWind vSAN eliminates any need in physical shared storage by simply mirroring internal hard disks and flash between hypervisor servers. StarWind Virtual SAN delivers performance and reliability using commercial off-the-shelf hardware, removing the need for costly proprietary components.
StarWind Virtual SAN® is entirely software-based, hypervisor-centric virtual machine storage. It creates a fault-tolerant and high-performing storage pool that is built for the virtualization workload “from scratch”. StarWind Virtual SAN® basically “mirrors” inexpensive internal storage between hosts
Installation
In this scenario, I will use the following architecture in my lab environment:
Let’s see how to install StarWind vSAN and how to use it. First, you must create a Windows Server based Virtual Machine, install the StarWind EXE on this Windows Server 2016. In my case, this server is called “StarWind01”. All the machines are domain joined and the AD Domain is called “get-cmd.local”.
First step, download the EXE from the following link: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/registration-starwind-virtual-san. You will also receive a TRIAL license key that you must copy on StarWind01. Run the package and Accept le license agreement:
Click Next
Select the destination location
Select which components should be installed. In my case, I installed the full version
Select the start menu folder and click Next
Click Next
At this step, you must select the last option if you already have the license key
Select your license key
Click Next
Click install to continue with the installation
Wait a few seconds
Click finish to launch the StarWind Management Console
StarWind is installed.
You must select a storage pool on StarWind01. Click “Choose Path…”
Select the pool
Click Open to launch the home page.
StarWind is up and running
Conclusion
In this part, we installed StarWind vSAN on a dedicated Windows Server 2016. In the next part, we will describe how to configure StarWind vSAN and how to create the Hyper-V Cluster. To finish, we will configure the Hyper-V Cluster to use StarWind vSAN.
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