LSFS not licensed on Linux VSAN Appliance

[fishtacos]

Hi,

I recently decided to try the new Linux VSAN VM appliance. Upon installing using the guide on the website, I booted it up noticed it came with a preconfigured license key.

The first step I took was try and create a deduplicated LSFS device. I was immediately confronted with the message "LSFS is not licensed on server.
I then double checked the document that compares the features of the Free and Paid version There was no mention of an LSFS limitation for the Free version.

My next step was to check the actual license description from the Mgmt web gui of Starwind and this caught my eye:

Features: Flat Storage...Deduplication... etc etc.

Should there be an explicit entry for LSFS? I don't see how Deduplication can be enabled but not LSFS in the features section. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Another thing I tried was manually copy/pasting the Free VSAN license key I received separately, but that returned an error. (I attempted to do so through the Ctrl-Alt-Shift console)

I was looking forward to having a GUI to manage the free edition (this is purely a homelab/learning situation) which is why I wanted to try the Linux VSAN appliance edition a try, but not having much luck with dedupe and LSFS.

Any thoughts? Cheers and thanks!

[Ivan (staff)]

Hello fishtacos,
Thanks for your interest in StarWind solution.
StarWind Linux VSA and StarWind vSAN free are different products.
Unfortunately, StarWind VSA does not support LSFS and deduplication.
License from StarWind vSAN free is not compatible with VSA because:
1) License for VSA is already plugged
2) License for StarWind vSAN (which is work on Windows based servers) is the different product.
To make possible use LSFS and Deduplication features you can install StarWind vSAN free on Windows based server.

[fishtacos]

Wonderful, thank you for the clarification Ivan.

If I may make one suggestion, it would be to either remove the LSFS option entirely in the Linux VSA if it's not supported, or make it clearer that that particular edition does not support those features. The error message that pops up is misleading, making me think that it's a licensing issue, rather than an unsupported feature.

[Michael (staff)]

Hello fishtacos,
Thank you for your feedback. I believe it will be fixed in next edition.