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Quick Start Guide:

Creating HA Device with
StarWind Virtual SAN Free
MARCH 2018

TECHNICAL PAPER
 Quick Start Guide:
Creating HA Device with StarWind Virtual SAN Free

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

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without the prior written consent of StarWind Software.

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 Quick Start Guide:
Creating HA Device with StarWind Virtual SAN Free

Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Implementation ................................................................................................................................ 5

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 Quick Start Guide:
Creating HA Device with StarWind Virtual SAN Free

Introduction
StarWind Virtual SAN Free allows creating a fault tolerant and high performing storage
pool by mirroring existing server’s internal storage between nodes. It is a free version
of StarWind Virtual SAN that eliminates need in physical shared storage. StarWind
Virtual SAN Free is a full-fledged production platform offering all the features of
StarWind VSAN. It utilizes all the industry-standard uplink protocols like iSCSI, SMB3,
NFS and the latest iSER and NVMf. It is shipped with a number of ready to use
Powershell scripts and supports both hyper-converged and “compute and storage
separated” configurations. It is completely functional and allowed for production.

This guide is intended for experienced Windows Server users and administrators who
are willing to configure a two-node highly available device that will run on top of
Windows Server 2012 R2 using StarWind Virtual SAN Free.

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.

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 Quick Start Guide:
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Implementation
1. Open the folder containing StarWind PowerShell samples.

By default, samples are located under the path:

C:\Program Files\StarWind Software\StarWind\StarWindX\Samples\powershell.

2. Locate the file named CreateHA(two nodes).ps1 and copy it to any other place for further
editing.

3. Open the file CreateHA(two nodes).ps1 file with PowerShell ISE (or any other text editor)
and change the values marked with red.

4. For the first StarWind node:

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• host; Enter the IP address of the host that has StarWind service installed;

• port; Enter the StarWind service connection port number (3261 by default);

• user and password; Enter the StarWind username and password (default values are:

username: root, password: starwind);

• firstNode.ImagePath; Enter the path to an existing directory where image file will be

located;

• firstNode.ImageName; Enter an image file name;

• firstNode.Size; Enter an image file size in megabytes;

• firstNode.CreateImage; Create an image file.

NOTE that firstNode.CreateImage value should be equal to $true;

• firstNode.TargetAlias; Enter the alias of the target;

• firstNode.AutoSynch; Make sure to specify automatic or manual synchronization after

device creation by setting the value of this variable to either $true or $false;

• firstNode.SyncInterface; Synchronization interfaces. Enter the IP address(s) of the partner

node interface(s) (the “second” StarWind node) which will be used as the synchronization

channel;

• firstNode.HBInterface; Heartbeat interfaces. Enter the IP address(s) of the partner

interface(s) (the “second” StarWind node) which will be used as the heartbeat channel;

• firstNode.CacheSize; Enter the L1 cache size in megabytes or leave it as “” in case you

would like it to be N/A;

• firstNode.CacheMode; Caching mode (“none” - without caching, “wt” – write-through mode

or “wb” - write-back mode). Enter the necessary value;

• firstNode.PoolName; Enter the pool name in case you would like your resource to be

tagged in SMI-S provider. Enter leave it as “” in case you do not need to tag your

resources to the SMI-S provider;

• firstNode.SyncSessionCount; Synchronization session count. Make sure you set the value of the

variable to “1”;

• firstNode.ALUAOptimized; Set ALUA optimization by entering $true or $false values.

• firstNode.SectorSize; Enter device sector size (512 for ESXi or 4096 for Hyper-V, SOFS);

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• firstNode.SerialID; Comment out this line.

5. For the second StarWind node:

• secondNode.HostName; Enter a the IP address of a host where StarWind service is running;

• secondNode.HostPort; Enter the number of a port for connecting to the StarWind Service

(3261 by default);

• secondNode.Login and secondNode.Password; Enter StarWind username and password

(default values are: username: root, password: starwind);

• secondNode.ImagePath; Enter the path to an existing directory where image file will be

located on the partner node (second node);

• secondNode.ImageName; Enter an image file name;

• secondNode.Size; Enter an image file size in megabytes. Note that is has be equal to the

value of firstNode.Size;

• secondNode.CreateImage; Create an image file. Note that secondNode.CreateImage value

should be equal to $true;

• secondNode.TargetAlias; Enter the alias of the target;

• secondNode.AutoSynch; Make sure to specify automatic or manual synchronization after

device creation by setting the value of this variable to either $true or $false;

• secondNode.SyncInterface;

• Synchronization interfaces. Enter the IP address(es) of the partner node interface(s) (the

“first” StarWind node) which will be used as the synchronization channel;

• secondNode.HBInterface; Heartbeat interfaces. Enter the IP address(es) of the partner

node interface(s) (the “first” StarWind node) which will be used as the heartbeat channel;

• secondNode.ALUAOptimized; Set ALUA optimization by entering $true or $false values.

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6. Run the script. After the HA device creation you should see the following:

7. In order to list all the devices and targets on the StarWind host, run the
enumDevicesTargets.ps1 script.

8. Make sure you modify the values marked with a red line in order to fit your setup (host IP,
port, user, password), save the script and run it.

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