I wonder about the pros and cons of setting up Starwind vVols.
Until now, we have used HPE StoreVirtual VSA as storage for our VMware VMs and Veeam Backup for backing them up.
When backing up, Veeam used Storage Snapshots and Direct SAN Transport Mode.
Now with Starwind, the classic way I can still use Direct SAN Transport Mode for Veeam by installing the Veeam proxy role on Starwind nodes and locally mounting the StarWind iSCSI read-only targets (correct me if I'm wrong).
However, I no longer benefit from the integration of Veeam with the Storage Snapshots of HPE StoreVirtual VSA. And now, deleting snapshots (consolidate, revert) can take a long time because it is no longer managed directly by the storage array.
The implementation of vVols would correct this problem but I would lose the Direct SAN Transport Mode from Veeam. It would be necessary to switch to Veeam's "Hotadd" mode to compensate for this loss (always correct me if I'm wrong).
The vVols would also allow more need of UNMAP.
Regarding my 2 Starwind nodes, here is their configuration:
- Storage:
- - Drive 1: Hardware RAID1 SSD: OS
- Drive 2: Hardware RAID1 NVMe (6TB): VMware VMs (Performance)
- Drive 3: Hardware RAID10 HDD (20TB): VMware VMs (Capacity)
- Drive 4: Hardware RAID10 HDD (20TB):
- - Card 1 & 2: 2x10Gb / s (teaming): Management
- Card 3: iSCSI (first path)
- Card 4: iSCSI (second path)
- Card 5: Starwind SYNC a Heartbeat (first path)
- Card 6: Starwind SYNC a Heartbeat (second path)
In relation to all this I have several questions:
1 ) Is what I said before correct regarding Veeam and vVols?
2 ) In relation to my environment, for or against theft and why?
3 ) There is very little documentation (https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resour ... iew-guide/) or articles regarding StarWind vVols, is it stable?
4 ) Is there some kind of HA with Starwind vVols VASA providers? Can we only put the address of one of the Starwind nodes in vCenter?
5) How does it work if the vCenter is no longer available? VMs are still running but no more possibility to start / stop VMs?
6 ) How does StarWind vVols work with three StarWind nodes including 1 as a witness node (node majority setup)?
7 ) With StarWind, can you specify multiple interfaces for iSCSI traffic and multiple cards for sync traffic?
8 ) How do I ensure that the VASA providers of Starwind vVols only present to the vCenter drives 2 and 3 of my Starwind nodes?
9 ) When creating the storage policies on vCenter, I did not understand how the L1 / L2 cache parameters work. What do the minimums and maximums correspond to and what do they apply to?
Thanks in advance,
Regards,