I have a question

[Shough]

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?

[yaroslav (staff)]

Welcome to StarWind Forum!

the main one is it's disk ROI, correct?

I am afraid I don't quite follow it. Could you please tell me more about what exactly you mean by disk return on investment? The thing is that with high availability, you sacrifice capacity for data high availability (the whole thing is called data redundancy for a reason ). In other words, in 2-way replica, you get an effective storage capacity of 1 server (1 is sacrificed). In a 3-way mirror, you get effective storage capacity on 1 server (2 are sacrificed for HA). In GRID, in a 3-way setup, though, you get a storage capacity of 1.5 servers.

That's not entirely correct. StarWind VSAN, in the vSphere environments, is indeed installed on top of ESXi hosts as the VM.
The storage is connected to each VM, formatted, and has a StarWind Image File file on it or an HA device (i.e., replicated Image File).

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

Yes, the principle is the same.

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 syncing that data to another VM host that is just sitting there in standby mode?

1. VSAN features active-active replication. cronjob is rather active-passive replication.
2. StarWind VSAN operates on the BLOCK level, while rsync is syncing the files.
It is a workaround, but not quite as effective as VSAN, IMO.

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