Give me some advice, please

[davidmanmem]

Hi all,

We currently have three Hyper-V nodes connected to a single StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) cluster, and we're planning to add a secondary VSAN to enable replication for high availability. Our goal is to set up replication (synchronous or asynchronous) between the two VSAN clusters without causing any downtime.

Could you please advise on the following?

Best Practices for adding a secondary VSAN without downtime.
Replication Setup: Should we use synchronous or asynchronous replication, and what factors should we consider?
Network Requirements: Any specific network considerations for replication (bandwidth, latency)?
Failover/Failback: How should we configure automatic failover and failback between the two clusters?
Performance Impact: Any tips for minimizing the performance overhead of replication?
Any help or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Best regards,
David.

[yaroslav (staff)]

Welcome to StarWind Forum

Just to make sure we are on the same page: Do you want to set up StarWind High availability using the standalone device?

Best Practices for adding a secondary VSAN without downtime.

Downtime will be needed to create an highly available device (shut down the VMs -> create HA -> start them up) also, promoting an image to HA is not possible with the script. I think the easiest will be using the special 1-day key with GUI. Reach out to us https://www.starwindsoftware.com/support-form. Use this thread and 1239316 as your references.

Replication Setup: Should we use synchronous or asynchronous replication, and what factors should we consider?

Only synchronous replication is possible.

Network Requirements: Any specific network considerations for replication (bandwidth, latency)?

See system requirements https://www.starwindsoftware.com/system-requirements and best practices https://www.starwindsoftware.com/best-p ... practices/

Failover/Failback: How should we configure automatic failover and failback between the two clusters?

You will need to set up a third-party solution for active-passive replication between sites. Say, StarWind HA storage is connected in one cluster in hyperconverged mode (i.e., the same servers carry the storage and VMs see more on the concept here https://www.starwindsoftware.com/hci-appliance) while the VMs are replicated with Veeam in intervals to another site (i.e., DR).

Performance Impact: Any tips for minimizing the performance overhead of replication?

High availability writes can be slower as for individual storage as it is necessary to write the same block twice.
Fast storage and networking might mitigate this though.

P.S. You can always learn more about StarWind VSAN concept from our techs. Request a demo https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v17-request-live-demo

[davidmanmem]

Oh I see. Thanks for your extremely informative and rapid responses. I really appreciate your expert support.
Regard,
David.

[yaroslav (staff)]

You are welcome!