vSAN Free nodes across different locations
Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2023 11:53 am
Hello! I have a dilemma. I have two sites which are located in different places. Site A has an internet download/upload speed of 100Mbps, and Site B has an internet download/upload speed of 800Mbps. My current plan is to use vSAN Free with PC 1, 2 and 3. PC 1 and 2 has separate 10Gbps networking between each other for synchronization, separate 10Gbps networking for shared storage with other VMs, and separate 1Gbps ports for heartbeat purposes. But all of this is within Site B's network. PC 3 is at Site A to help any local computers or laptops at that network access the files much faster in the case of any network disruptions to Site B. Site B is connected to Site A via a site-to-site VPN connection between two Fortigate routers. I have attached a simple overview below:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/tBCbOJ0.png)
Here are my questions:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/tBCbOJ0.png)
Here are my questions:
- 1. Can I include PC 3 within the vSAN network? If not, does StarWind vSAN have any feature that does syncing to remote servers?
1.1. If the above is possible, will it be a big issue if PC 3 is in a different location and all the heartbeat/synchronization/etc. is going through a single internet connection? If so, how should I deal with this issue? Site A is prone to internet disruptions probably once every 2 months or so (lightning strikes, sadly), so PC 1 and PC 2 had to be hosted in a different location. It's mostly loading and editing Word/Excel files, I think the total storage size is around 100-130GB, there's a lot of Excel/Word files stored.
2. If I want to have a witness host, will it exceed vSAN Free's maximum node count of 3? If it does, then can I use any one of the PCs acting as a witness host too? Or does it have to be completely separate?