StarWind Software

Hi, I am evaluating the options of Starwind vSAN, and from what I can see, the main one is it's disk ROI, correct? It is basically a software layer that installs on top of VMware ESXi and replicates the data from local datastores to other VM hosts. So you are always going to be using max disk usage on all node all the time even though the VMs may only be ever running on one VM host.

If you use a 2 node setup, you are setting up a RAID 1 mirror of the local storage with another VM host, right?

How is this any different than just setting up a cronjob that is constantly rsyncing every hour the data from a local datastore to a standby NFS server and rsyncing that data to another VM host that is just sitting there in standby mode?

Hi,

Sorry for such a delay. StarWind VSAN is about virtualization and replication.

It is basically a software layer that installs on top of VMware ESXi and replicates the data from local datastores to other VM hosts.

Yes, but you can leave the images non-replicated too (i.e., with no HA).

How is this any different than just setting up a cronjob that is constantly rsyncing every hour the data from a local datastore to a standby NFS server and rsyncing that data to another VM host that is just sitting there in standby mode?

StarWind VSAN does active-active replication, while the solution you described does active-passive replication. This means that data on both mirrors are the same all the time, provided that HA devices are synchronized.
Also, StarWind VSAN presents the storage over iSCSI.