{"id":46968,"date":"2020-11-23T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T08:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/?p=46968"},"modified":"2020-11-22T13:35:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-22T12:35:18","slug":"starwind-virtual-san-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/starwind-virtual-san-free\/","title":{"rendered":"StarWind Virtual SAN Free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-46969 size-full\" title=\"starwind-virtual-san-free-01\" src=\"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/starwind-virtual-san-free-01.jpg\" alt=\"starwind-virtual-san-free-01\" width=\"602\" height=\"202\" \/><\/p>\n<p>StarWind Virtual SAN Free is the\u00a0<strong>free version<\/strong> of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/starwind-virtual-san-installation-pt-1\/\">StarWind VSAN<\/a>, the popular software solution that eliminates any need for a SAN or NAS or other physical shared storage.<\/p>\n<p>Product mainly oriented to <strong>SMBs and ROBOs<\/strong>, StarWind VSAN Free <strong>replaces expensive physical shared storage<\/strong> in favour of an affordable solution fulfilling the modern business requirements.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Although Virtual SAN Free <strong>will not bring all features<\/strong> provided by the paid version, data are always available and secure with a solution that stays on track with your <strong>budget constraints<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>StarWind Virtual SAN Free features<\/h2>\n<p>StarWind VSAN is available for Windows and as a <a href=\"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/starwind-linux-vsan-appliance\/\">pre-packaged Linux VM<\/a>, eliminating the need of buying Windows licenses. A <strong>fault-tolerant shared storage pool<\/strong> is created by mirroring internal storage between hypervisors and to provide redundancy you need <strong>at least a two-nodes<\/strong> deployment.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The free version doesn\u2019t have any limitation in terms of performance but since <strong>no GUI<\/strong> is available, the configuration must be done through a set of ready-to-use <strong>PowerShell scripts<\/strong>. You can modify existing scripts or create new ones.<\/li>\n<li>No HCLs for\u00a0StarWind VSAN for vSphere\u00a0are necessary since it\u00a0<strong>fits in every configuration<\/strong> that satisfies the minimum requirements.<\/li>\n<li>StarWind VSAN can be installed in the following <strong>supported environments<\/strong>: VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM and Xen.<\/li>\n<li>The technical support is <strong>community-supported<\/strong> through StarWind Forums.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>StarWind Virtual SAN Free can be implemented for the <strong>following uses<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Shared storage for Microsoft Hyper-V VMs and SQL Server DBs<\/li>\n<li>Shared storage for Microsoft Failover Clusters, Exchange, Oracle and SAP DBs<\/li>\n<li>Shared storage for KVM, Citrix XenServer and Xen Project VMs<\/li>\n<li>HA file server<\/li>\n<li>Shared storage for VMware vSphere Clusters<\/li>\n<li>Shared storage for VMware ESXi VMs<\/li>\n<li>HA storage<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Minimum requirements<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>4 vCPUs with 2 GHz reserved<\/li>\n<li>4 GB of RAM<\/li>\n<li>3 NIC ports dedicated as separate vSwitches (management, synchronization, and iSCSI traffic)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"listheight5\" class=\"feature-text\">\n<div class=\"list\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Implement a free VMware infrastructure<\/h2>\n<p>For businesses with a limited budget or ROBO environments, you can implement a complete virtual infrastructure with <strong>minimum costs<\/strong>.\u00a0Combining the <strong>free version of ESXi<\/strong> with StarWind Virtual SAN Free, you can deploy a small environment providing all resources and storage required to run the virtual machines <strong>license free<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Due to the limitations of the Virtual SAN Free you can deploy a <strong>maximum of three nodes<\/strong>, enough to run for example a two-nodes\u00a0 <strong>highly available storage<\/strong> with at least two ESXi hosts (perfect for ROBOs). Data are synchronized across the nodes making the <strong>data always available<\/strong> in case of a host failure.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-46971 size-full\" title=\"starwind-virtual-san-free-02\" src=\"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/starwind-virtual-san-free-02.jpg\" alt=\"starwind-virtual-san-free-02\" width=\"600\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The real limit of this free solution lies in the\u00a0<strong>unavailability of the vStorage API<\/strong> in the hypervisor that doesn't allow to perform VM backups at the host level, but <strong>only legacy backups<\/strong> can be processed with the use of an agent.<\/p>\n<p>StarWind free Virtual SAN is available to download at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.starwindsoftware.com\/starwind-virtual-san-free#download\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">StarWind website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"signature\" src=\"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/images\/firma.jpg\" alt=\"signature\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>StarWind Virtual SAN Free is the\u00a0free version of\u00a0StarWind VSAN, the popular software solution that eliminates any need for a SAN or NAS or other physical shared storage. Product mainly oriented to SMBs and ROBOs, StarWind VSAN Free replaces expensive physical shared storage in favour of an affordable solution fulfilling the modern business requirements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":46969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2879994398731222_17841400390232720":"","mastodon_115463926174894442_115463926174894442":"","linkedin_93tdZWzMZc_93tdZWzMZc":"","bluesky_did:plc:tkabz5kl2rukzdwtuongv3kz_did:plc:tkabz5kl2rukzdwtuongv3kz":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[903,1787],"tags":[880,1774,2039],"class_list":["post-46968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vmware-en","category-starwind-en","tag-free-en","tag-starwind","tag-vsan-en","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nolabnoparty.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}