Starwin Virtual SAN Setup Question

[matt001]

Hi

I am wanting to know if I can setup StarWinds VSAN as per this guide
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/techni ... luster.pdf

But not setup the Failover Cluster part and just connect the drives using iSCSI Targets.

Reason I want to know if this is possible as I have 2 Physical Nodes that I want to install StarWinds on and only use StarWinds VSAN for a HA File Server Cluster which I want to build to 2 Virtual Machines and make them into a Cluster using the File Server Role for a General File Server but also use the Physical Nodes to run 1 or two Virtual Machines that I don't to put on the same disks as StarWinds VSAN.

As I want to try and reduce the amount of Physical Servers and to use 2 Physical Servers just for StarWinds a a HA File Server Cluster is not economical due to cost but want to also use Hyper V to run other VMs.

Regards

Matthew

[Ivan (staff)]

Hello Matt001,
If I understand you properly, I am not sure that it will work as expected, because VMs inside the HA general file server will be interrupted in case, if the role will migrate to the second server.
Could you clarify, what the point of deploying two VMs to create the File-server if you can create the same role on the physical hosts?
I would recommend you avoid too many layers of virtualization and economy on Microsoft servers licenses.
You always can run VMs on the physical hosts using the local (underlying) storage in Hyper-V role. Hyper-V can work with other roles and features simultaneously without any issues.
Thank you.

[matt001]

Hi Ivan,

The reason why I would like to do this is due being able use the Physical Hosts as a dedicated HA File Server. I need to use the Physical Server to host t 1 or two small VMs on the Physical Server as well.

[Oleg(staff)]

Hi matt001,

You can create several StarWind HA disks, one of them use as File Server with adding this disk to File Server role and other one use as CSV for VMs in Failover Cluster.