hyper-converged 3 nodes scenario with vmware vsphere · hyper-converged 3 nodes scenario with...

#1 HyperConverged Appliance for SMB and ROBO

StarWind Virtual SAN®

Hyper-Converged 3 Nodes

Scenario with VMware vSphere APRIL 2015

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StarWind Virtual SAN

Hyper-Converged 3 Nodes Scenario

with VMware vSphere

Trademarks

“StarWind”, “StarWind Software” and the StarWind and the StarWind Software logos are registered

trademarks of StarWind Software. “StarWind LSFS” is a trademark of StarWind Software which may be

registered in some jurisdictions. All other trademarks are owned by their respective owners.

Changes

The material in this document is for information only and is subject to change without notice. While

reasonable efforts have been made in the preparation of this document to assure its accuracy,

StarWind Software assumes no liability resulting from errors or omissions in this document, or from

the use of the information contained herein. StarWind Software reserves the right to make changes in

the product design without reservation and without notification to its users.

Technical Support and Services

If you have questions about installing or using this software, check this and other documents first -

you will find answers to most of your questions on the Technical Papers webpage or in StarWind

Forum. If you need further assistance, please contact us.

Copyright ©2009-2016 StarWind Software Inc.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

written consent of StarWind Software.

In 2016, Gartner named StarWind “Cool Vendor for Compute Platforms”.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and

does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other

designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization

and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or

implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a

particular purpose.

About StarWind

StarWind is a pioneer in virtualization and a company that participated in the development of this

technology from its earliest days. Now the company is among the leading vendors of software and

hardware hyper-converged solutions. The company’s core product is the years-proven StarWind

Virtual SAN, which allows SMB and ROBO to benefit from cost-efficient hyperconverged IT

infrastructure. Having earned a reputation of reliability, StarWind created a hardware product line and

is actively tapping into hyperconverged and storage appliances market. In 2016, Gartner named

StarWind “Cool Vendor for Compute Platforms” following the success and popularity of StarWind

HyperConverged Appliance. StarWind partners with world-known companies: Microsoft, VMware,

Veeam, Intel, Dell, Mellanox, Citrix, Western Digital, etc

https://www.starwind.com/resource-library/


https://www.starwind.com/forums/


http://www.starwindsoftware.com/forums/

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/contact-us

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/contact-us

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Contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 4

Solution Diagram .............................................................................................................................. 5

Preparing Hypervisor for StarWind Deployment ...................................................................... 6

Creating Datacenter ................................................................................................................... 6

Creating a Cluster ....................................................................................................................... 7

Add Hosts to Cluster ................................................................................................................... 8

Configuring Networks .............................................................................................................. 13

Preparing StarWind VMs ............................................................................................................... 21

Configuring StarWind VMs startup/shutdown ..................................................................... 22

Configuring Automatic Storage Rescan ................................................................................ 23

Provisioning Storage with StarWind ........................................................................................... 32

Creating devices (DS1, DS2) .................................................................................................... 32

Preparing Datastores ..................................................................................................................... 43

Adding Discover Portals ........................................................................................................... 43

Creating datastores .................................................................................................................. 49

Turn On vSphere HA Feature ...................................................................................................... 54

Contacts ............................................................................................................................................ 55

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Introduction

Traditionally VMware requires having some sort of the shared storage to guarantee

the data safety, allow the virtual machines migration, enables continuous application

availability and eliminates any single point of failure within IT environment. VMware

users have to choose between two options when choosing the shared storage:

• Hyper-Converged solutions, that allows sharing the same hardware resources

for the application (i.e. hypervisor, database) and the shares storage, thus

decreasing the TCO and achieving the outstanding performance results.

• Compute and Storage separated solutions that keeps the compute and storage

layers separately from each other, thus making the maintenance easier,

increasing the hardware usage efficiency and allows building the system

accurately for solving the task.

This guide is intended for experienced VMware and Windows system administrators

and IT professionals who would like to configure StarWind® Virtual SAN Hyper-

Converged solution for vSphere deployments. It provides a step-by-step guidance on

configuring a 3-node vSphere cluster using StarWind Virtual SAN to convert local

storage of the ESXi hosts into a fault tolerant shared storage resource for ESXi.

A full set of up-to-date technical documentation can always be found here, or by

pressing the Help button in the StarWind Management Console.

For any technical inquiries please visit our online community, Frequently Asked

Questions page, or use the support form to contact our technical support department.




https://www.starwindcom/starwind-faq

https://www.starwindcom/starwind-faq

https://www.starwind.com/support-form

https://www.starwind.com/support-form

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Solution Diagram

The diagram bellow illustrates the network and storage configuration of the resulting solution

described in the guide.

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Preparing Hypervisor for StarWind Deployment

Creating Datacenter

1. Connect to vCenter, choose Getting Started tab, click create Datacenter.

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2. Enter Datacenter name and click OK.

Creating a Cluster

1. Click the Datacenter’s Getting Started tab and click Create a cluster.

2. Enter name of the cluster.

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Add Hosts to Cluster

1. Open your cluster inset and click Add a host.

2. Enter name or IP address of the ESXi host.

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Click Next.

3. Enter the administrative account information.

Click Next.

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4. Verify settings.

Click Next.

5. Assign the License.

Click Next.

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6. Lockdown mode is disabled by default.

Click Next.

7. Verify the settings .

Click Finish.

8. Add other hosts to cluster, result is on screen below.

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Configuring Networks

1. Create vSwitch to use for HeartBeat and LAN.

2. Create 2 vSwitches to use as ISCSI Data channels.

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3. Create 2 vSwitches to use as SYNC channels.

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4. Perform the network configuration with same steps (1-5) described above on second ESXi

node: Create vSwitch to use for HeartBeat and LAN.

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7. Perform the network configuration with same steps described above on third ESXi node:

Create vSwitch to use for HeartBeat and LAN.


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Preparing StarWind VMs

1. Create VMs with Windows 2012 R2 where StarWind will be deployed.

It is SW1 on the first ESXi host with the following settings.

Create VMs SW2 and SW3 on the second and third ESXi host with the same settings.

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Configuring StarWind VMs startup/shutdown

1. Setup the VM startup policy on both ESXi hosts.

2. Start the VMs, install OS and and StarWind.

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Configuring Automatic Storage Rescan

Configure automatic storage rescan for each ESXi host.

1. Download vSphere PowerCLI and install it on each StarWind virtual machine:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=PCLI550&productId=352

2. In the vm running StarWind open Powershell and change the Execution policy to

Unrestricted.

3. Type in Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted and press Enter.

4. In the StarWind management Console select the server, switch to the Configuration

Tab on the right and press the Event Notifications link.

Press the Add link in the upper right corner of the tab.

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=PCLI550&productId=352

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5. Select All events radio button and enable the HA plugin checkbox.

6. On the Action tab pick Add record to system event log from the menu.

7. Create a script to do an HBA rescan on the hypervisor host .

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Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core | Out-Null

$ESXiHost1 = “IP address”

$ESXiUser = “Login”

$ESXiPassword = “Password”

Connect-VIServer $ESXiHost1 –User $ESXiUser –Password $ESXiPassword | Out-Null

Get-VMHostStorage $ESXiHost1 –RescanAllHba

Disconnect-VIServer $ESXiHost1 –Confirm:$false

In the appropriate lines specify the ESXi host IP address and login credentials on which this

StarWind vm is stored and running:

$ESXiHost1 = “IP address”

$ESXiUser = “Login”

$ESXiPassword = “Password”

Save the script as rescan_script.ps1 on C:\ of the vm.

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8. Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Task Scheduler -> Create Basic Task , and

follow the wizard steps:

9. Click the Next button.

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13. In the Add arguments field type: “-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -NoLogo -NonInteractive -

NoProfile -WindowStyle Hidden -File C:\rescan_script.ps1”. Click the Next button.

14. Click Finish to exit the Wizard.

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15. Configure the task to run with highest privileges by enabling the checkbox at the bottom

of the window. Also make sure that “Run whether user is logged on or not” option is

selected.

16. Switch to the Triggers Tab.

17. On the Triggers Tab verify that the trigger is setup correctly.

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18. Switch to the Actions Tab.

19. On the Actions Tab verify the parameters for the task.

Press OK and type in the credentials for the user whose rights will be used to execute the

command.

20. Do same steps on other StarWind vms, specifying the corresponding settings.

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Provisioning Storage with StarWind

Creating devices (DS1, DS2)

1. Open Add Device (advanced) Wizard.

2. Select Hard disk device as the type of a device to be created. Click Next to continue.

3. Select virtual disk. Click Next to continue.

4. Specify a virtual disk location and size.

Click Next.

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5. Specify virtual disk options.

Click Next to continue.

6. Define the caching policy and specify the cache size (in MB). You can also set maximum

available cache size by selecting the appropriate checkbox.


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7. Optionally, define the L2 caching policy and the cache size. Click Next to continue.

8. Specify target parameters. Select the Target Name checkbox to enter a custom name of a

target.

Otherwise, the name is generated automatically in accordance with the specified target alias.


9. Click Create to add a new device and attach it to the target.

10. Click Finish to close the wizard.

11. Right-click the recently created device and select Replication manager from the shortcut

menu.

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12. Then, click Add replica.

13. Select Synchronous two-way replication as a replication mode.

Click Next to proceed.

14. Specify a partner hostname, IP address and port number.

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Click Next.

15. Choose Create new Partner Device and click Next.

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16. Click Change network settings....

17. Specify interfaces for synchronization and Heartbeat channels.

Click OK. Then click Next.

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18. Click Create Replica.

19. Add another replica.

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20. Select Synchronous “Two-Way” Replication and click Next.

21. Enter name or IP address of the third StarWind node

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22. Select Create new Partner device.

23. Click Change Network Settings.

24. Select HeartBeat and synchronization channels.

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25. Click Finish to close the wizard.

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26. The successfully added devices appear in the StarWind Console.

27. Follow the similar procedure for creation of the other virtual disks tobe used as

datastores.

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Preparing Datastores

Adding Discover Portals

1. To connect previously created devices to ESX host click over manage tab, then click

Storage and choose (or add) the ISCSI storage adapter. Under Adapter details section

click Targets tab.

2. Under Dynamic Discovery click the Add… button to add iSCSI servers.

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3. Enter the ip address of the first SrtarWind node (sw1) from the virtual local network

172.16.127.*

Click OK.

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4. Add another IP addresses of the second StarWind node (sw2) form networks: iSCSI Data1

and iSCSI Data3. iSCSI Data1 - 172.16.210.*

Click OK.

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5. iSCSI Data3 - 172.16.212.*

6. The result should look like the image below

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7. After that rescan storage.

8. Now you should see the previously created StarWind devices.

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9. Repeat all steps from this section on other ESXi node specifying the corresponding IP

addresses.

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Creating datastores

1. Open Datacenter Getting Started tab and click Add a datastore.

2. New Datastore wizard appears.

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3. Select VMFS.

Click Next.

4. Enter name of datastore (DS1), select the first host and device for datastore.

Click Next.

5. Select VMFS 5.

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Click Next.

6. Enter datastore size.

Click Next.

7. Verify the settings.

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Click Finish.

8. Add another Datastore (DS2) in the same way but select second host and device for

second datastore.

9. Verify that your storages are connected to both hosts. Otherwise rescan storage adapter.

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Turn On vSphere HA Feature

1. Open cluster setting, inset vSphere HA, click Edit…

2. Turn ON vSphere HA. Click OK.

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Contacts

US Headquarters EMEA and APAC

1-617-449-7717

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+7 495 975 94 39

(Russian Federation and CIS)

1-866-790-2646

Customer Support Portal:

Support Forum:

Sales:

General Information:

https://www.starwind.com/support

https://www.starwind.com/forums

[email protected]

[email protected]

StarWind Software, Inc. 35 Village Rd., Suite 100, Middleton, MA 01949

©2016, StarWind Software Inc. All rights reserved.

https://www.starwind.com/support

https://www.starwind.com/forums%0d

mailto:[email protected]

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