Does VSAN support iSCSI datastores?

[sjwk]

I have four hosts (currently vSphere Enterprise (not Plus) but under review) with local disk only for booting, and a pair of Synology UC3200 SANs (all flash, active/active dual controller, 10Gbps connectivity to hosts), which present as two iSCSI datastores from each SAN, attached to all hosts. Can VSAN use the iSCSI targets (either as vSphere datastores, or natively) as its disks, or does it only work with purely local disks on the hosts?

Currently the infrastructure is split across two sites, with two hosts and one SAN at each, and an LACP pair of 10Gbps fibres linking them. VMs have an affinity to one or other site, with their storage on the SAN at that site, replicated using Vmware replication to the second datastore on the SAN at the other site. Which is OK for being able to recover from major outage, but inconvenient for something minor like needing to reboot a switch stack, or a power outage beyond the UPS capacity.

I feel that VSAN ought to help with making this more resilient and requiring less hands-on recovery during planned or unplanned brief outages. Would that be true?

[yaroslav (staff)]

Welcome to StarWind Forum.
StarWind VSAN features active-active storage replication. It means that both replication partners, if synchronized, carry the same data set.
You can connect the storage over iSCSI to the ESXi hosts, and use these volumes as the underlying storage for StarWind.
The problem is though you are building up iSCSI-connected storage over iSCSI-connected storage. As a result, the setup is very network-dependent. Whatever affects the network stack affects StarWind VSAN too. It also introduces setup handling complexities.
Due to overheads, we also generally do not recommend LACP teaming to connect StarWind HA devices or replication. If you need redundancy, simply use separate links.
Network-wise, please check StarWind VSAN System requirements https://www.starwindsoftware.com/system-requirements and Best Practices https://www.starwindsoftware.com/best-p ... practices/

The best will be booking a demo with one of our techs https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v17-request-live-demo. You can learn more about concepts and ask technical questions during the call.