Initial Setup question

[acarty]

I'm having trouble finding information on how to configure Starwind Vsand in a 2 node setting. I currently have 2 host that are licensed to run ESXI 5.5. I want to use Starwind Vsand as a storage appliance that is replicated between the 2 hosts. This storage appliance would hold a datastore of all the production virtual machines for my organization. My question has to do with the initial setup of each host.
When configuring each host should I:
a) install ESXI on a single partition on each host and then install Starwind on top of that
b) create 2 separate partition on each host one for the ESXI operating system and one for the Starwind Vsand appliance.
c) try some other approach
Anyone else out there using a 2 node ESXI setup for Starwind Vsand?

[Boris (staff)]

Hi acarty,

The initial steps for you would be the following ones:
1. Install ESXi onto your physical hosts. ESXi will take the necessary amount of space required from the whole disk capacity (in case no separate disk is used for OS).
2. Make an ESXi datastore on top of the remaining disk capacity and adjust its size as/if needed.
3. Install Windows VMs on top of the datastores for further deployment of StarWind VSAN (100 GB disk for OS is recommended). Make sure you assign enough resources to these VMs, as further on they will take care of your storage.
4. Add vmdk disks of the required capacity to each StarWind VM. Be sure to create them as Eagerly Zeroed disks.
5. In Window VMs where StarWind VSAN will be installed, create a partition on top of that disk. It will serve as a partition for StarWind disks.
6. Deploy StarWind VSAN and create targets/devices.
7. Connect the StarWind targets in ESXi's software iSCSI initiator and create datastores on top of them.
Hope you get the general idea. If you need particular advice, feel free to let us know.

[acarty]

So I can just create one single partition, install ESXI and then starWind on top?

[Boris (staff)]

acarty, if "one single partition" from your previous answer means "one single RAID array", so the answer is positive. Be sure to create the datastore on top of the space remaining there after installation of ESXi and put StarWind VM onto that datastore.