3 Node VSAN - Active-Active Synchronous + Asynchronous

[Otaluke]

Can I configure StarWind VSAN Free with 3 physical VSAN servers as such:

Two of them as a synchronous two-way active-active replication and a third offsite as an asynchronous one-way replication for continuous disaster backup of the data contained on the primary active-active pair?
If yes, is it as simple as choosing the applicable replication method on each?

Note: Windows based. Compute and storage on separate layers.

I have been very happily using StarWind VSAN Free successfully for the past 3 years as a Windows compute and storage separate with 2 VSAN storage servers and 5 Hyper-V compute servers. I am adequately knowledgeable on its setup and use. I am now upgrading for larger storage and performance and would love to incorporate a 3rd mirror offsite for disaster recovery (I have an offsite dark fiber connection configured for 10 Gig)

Thank you,
Brent

[yaroslav (staff)]

Greetings,

I would recommend using a 3-way mirror for this setup.
May I learn more about the connections between sites? Are the connections between sites redundant (i.e., 2 switches, 2 physical links between locations)? What is the latency between these sites?

[Otaluke]

Hi, thank you for your response.

The two onsite VSAN units are direct connected by dual 10 GIG cables for sync. The heartbeat, management & storage access are over 4 1G MPIO connections split evenly across two redundant switches as are the Hyper-V servers.

The offsite unit is over a dark fiber connection, 3 miles away, that I intend to connect with 10G SFP transceivers, dedicated switches on each end. The latency should be incredibly low, but the bandwidth is limited to 10G and not redundant and only over a single connection for everything (sync, management, heartbeat, etc.)

I was hoping this offsite unit could be more of an added disaster recovery node in case of an onsite physical loss of servers, but not actively relied on for daily operations.

Thank you,
Brent

[yaroslav (staff)]

Hi there,

Sorry for the delay once again. Asynchronous replication relies on LSFS and that may not be the solution you are looking for due to the system requirements of LSFS container. See more at https://knowledgebase.starwindsoftware. ... scription/.
Actually, provided that you have good and redundant network gear 3-way replica and stretched clustering should work good.
So, please consider sticking with the 3-way mirror or use Veeam Replica.