The StarWind Virtual SAN configuration is finalized connecting the created devices to the ESXi hosts of the StarWind cluster.
To ensure storage resilience, the application relies on redundant network links between StarWind hosts allowing to maintain a fully fault tolerant storage cluster with just hosts. This solution avoids the need of using a third entity to maintain resilience in case of hardware failure.
Blog series
StarWind Virtual SAN installation - pt.1
StarWind Virtual SAN configuration - pt.2
StarWind Virtual SAN setup datastore - pt.3
Discover targets
To connect previously created devices to the ESXi hosts, you have to select the first host and go to Configure > Storage Adapters. Select the adapters under iSCSI Software Adapter then go to Network Port Binding tab. Here you can find the StarWind_iSCSI_VMs bind created in part 1.
Go to Targets and make sure Dynamic Discovery is selected. Click Add to add StarWind Servers nodes.
Enter the IP address of the first StarWind Server node and click OK.
Now enter the IP address of the second StarWind Server node then click OK.
Now click Rescan button to discover newly added storage devices.
The StarWind device has been discovered successfully.
Repeat same procedure for the second ESXi host.
Create the datastore
Select the first host and go to Configure > Datastore. Click on Create a new datastore icon to setup the datastore.
Select VMFS as datastore type and click Next.
Enter a Datastore name and select the StarWind iSCSI device to use. Click Next.
Specify the VMFS version (i.e. VMFS 6) and click Next to continue.
Specify the Partition Configuration and click Next.
Review the settings and click Finish to create the datastore.
The StarWind datastore has been created successfully.
Check that created storage is connected also to the second host of the StarWind cluster.
Datastore path
Since StarWind Virtual SAN does not support any form of NIC teaming for resiliency or throughput aggregation, the recommended MPIO mode is Round-Robin.
Right click the created StarWind datastore and select Settings.
Go to Connectivity and Multipathing tab and select the first host. Click on Set Multipathing button.
In Path selection policy field, specify Round Robin (VMware) and click OK.
The policy is now set to Round Robin.
Repeat same procedure for the second host.
The virtual machines can now be stored on the new datastore provided by StarWind.
Local storage of both ESXi hosts have been converted in a fault tolerant shared storage mirrored between the nodes. StarWind applications ensures data safety and maintains continuous application availability.
StarWind vSAN is available as 30-day trial for testing purposes.
StarWind offers also a Free Edition, a self-supported or community-supported version that can be managed through the Windows PowerShell or SCVMM since the access to StarWind Management Console is limited to 30 days after installation.
