StarWind Software

Hello! It's my first post, so please don't bite! I'm quite newbie in SANs, HA, clusters, and so on technologies
Sorry for my English, it's not my native language

I just want to ask if can I install and use Free Version of vSAN on bare metal machines which are the AD domain controllers servers (master and secondary DCs)?
I have two (almost) identical Dell R710 servers (6 HDDs /2x 144GB 15k SAS, and 4x no Dell branded 600 GB 15k SAS drives/, 144GB RAM on each, 2x Intel E5530 2,40GHz processors, 8x 1Gb NICs /4 embedded Qlogic, and 2x dual port Intel NICs/ on each server).
Actually I have a fresh Windows 2016 Server Standard edition installation and AD role deployed.
Because both servers have got 4 available HDDs, I want to build clustered storage for about 150 users in my company as "My Documents" only HA storage (moved to the new localization via GPO policy for all domain users).
Now the 2 system disks are configured as RAID1 mirror, 4 available disks are configured as RAID5 vdisk (4x 600GB 15k SAS 3,5", so it gave me one vdisk 1,64TB of free space. Mostly used documents by users are doc(x), xls(x) and pdfs, so nothing intensive used at all, sometimes one opened document by user can be opened for hours... ).
All disks are connected to Dell PERC 6/i RAID controller on both machines. I don't like wasting space, so my goal is to do HA storage for users documents folder beside domain controllers functionality.
I realized that I can't use PERC 6/i for S2D because of RAID bus, even more(!) the W2016 Standard edition is castrated of this feature (what a morrons!)
That's why I found StarWind and vSAN So, does vSAN Free reach my planned scenario (install a new cluster and fileserver for users as the cluster role)?...

Why I'm asking?
I've already tried to do this for 3 times using similar to my scenario (but w/o hyper-v role) step-by-step document (https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwi ... -v-cluster), but I stuck at point 81 with adding 1,64TB disk to CSV: "Right click the required disk and select Add to Cluster Shared Volumes" - it gave me an error (in English: 0x800713b8 "The cluster request is not valid for this object").
Validation tests before cluster forming went with no warnings/errors. Witness was also configured OK from within FCM.
Did you met such of error? I don't know what's wrong or what I missed.
If any of StarWind engineers would be so kind and would like to help me, I can make a movie from both servers screen of all my configuration steps to avoid confusion from my side. It's still test env, no production yet, so I can test.
What is working OK for me, it's DFS, but it's not a good solution for a lot of opened users documents, because they will be replicated to the second partner after they're closed, so I don't want DFS in my scenario.
Thank you very much.

PS. I already have got license key of vSAN Free.

OK, I sobered up after my last post, and set up clustered file server for general purposes, everything works flawlessly

My new question is - both nodes have got a lot of free RAM (144 GB on each node)...
Is it good practice to assign for example 80 GB RAM for 1,6 TB L1 cache on FLAT HAimage in file server scenario? The image file resides on HW RAID5 (4x SAS 15k 600GB disks).
Additionally, would be better to change FLAT HAimage to LSFS on my hardware?

Thanks

Hello Bacardi,
Thank you for your interest in StarWind solution.
L1 cache size depends on your Production needs. Since you wrote that it will be mainly for documents, I do not see the need to configure the big L1 cache to improve read/write performance.
You can follow the recommendation in the document - put 1 GB of L1 cache per 1 TB of the device size (let's say in your case it will be 2 GB) or configure more at your needs.
As for LSFS usage, one of its drawback is that it need more space than initial LSFS size - https://knowledgebase.starwindsoftware. ... scription/. Since you don't like wasting space, just use FLAT HAimage