What the heck, let me try to respond to this. I'm not staff, just going through this sort of process myself, but I think I can help.
1. Can someone tell me what the StarWind Storage Appliance is for?
StarWind creates a virtual version of a SAN or NAS shared storage device. This is real, and yes, it is what it sounds like.
This is redundant, fault-tolerant virtual network storage that can (e.g.) be used as Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) storage for Windows Failover Clusters. I have it working for that now, using two host servers to provide robust hyper-converged Hyper-V services (there are way too many marketing buzzwords in this). VM Live Migration between servers works as nice as you please.
Key differences between using StarWind and using a NAS are:
a) the storage is redundanly replicated between two servers' separate storage, and is thereby fault-tolerant -- either host in a two-host cluster can be down and things continue to run.
b) no external NAS/SAN storage devices are required, simplifying physical complexity and saving money. You do have to have adequate redundant storage in both servers, of course.
2. Is it only for iSCSI storage connections?
Yes, at this time. If you want to redundantly share SMB storage (e.g. for desktops) from StarWind. I'd suggest you spin up a Windows file server as a Hyper-V guest VM. That's what I do. Works fine.
FWIW, as with Hyper-V servers, _never_ use a host server to directly provide end user services. That's a bad idea on many levels.
3. Is there a HA functionality?
See above -- yes, definitely. StarWind automatically clones and synchronizes storage between host servers, and maintains functionality when one host server is down, re-establishing synchronization when it is returned to service. This means you can take a host server out of service for hardware changes, patch updates, etc., without interrupting services to users. It really works.
4. Will there be a future release with SMB support for configuring a NAS?
I've read that there might be. But I'd have to ask why you are asking about that. I don't see a need. I wasn't a fan of iSCSI in the past, but aside from a needing little more clarity in documentation, I'm impressed at how well StarWind has implemented the iSCSI-based approach.
5. How can I configure a replication between two nodes? My first try was unsuccessful because I configured the device on the second node manually and then deleted the device but the replication couldn't be configured.
Yes, I ran into something like that too. Two recommendations:
1. Read and follow the technical paper "StarWind Virtual SAN Hyper-Converged 2 Nodes Scenario with Hyper-V Cluster" published: August 2016
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwi ... -v-cluster
2. Search this forum for recent postings, such as thread thread "Troubleshooting "not synchronized" status",
https://forums.starwindsoftware.com/vie ... f=5&t=4819
I sympathize with your complaint about the documentation. That technical paper is really pretty good. The challenge I've found with StarWind documentation is that, while there is a lot, it was hard to find the good stuff. I wasted a lot of paper printing stuff that turned out to be useless. They don't seem to acknowledge that concern. In the other hand, the support StarWind staff provide on this forum is amazing.
-- Ken
