Installing Virtual SAN on the Hyper-V parent/host

[impaladoug]

Hi all,

I'm new to StarWind and we have project we're looking to do with it. Am I correct in understanding that Virtual SAN actually is supposed to be installed directly on the Hyper-V parent/host, rather than on a child/guest Windows VM hosted on the parent/host?

I just wanted to make sure I understand this clearly.

And my follow up questions to this would be:

1.) Does this not create issues with Microsoft tech support, since they don't want the Hyper-V parent/host to be shared with other server roles?
2.) How does this work with RAM cache? I suppose we'd need to be sure to have enough RAM in the parent for:
a.) The VMs we plan to run on the Hyper-V host.
b.) Whatever amount of RAM cache we wish to use with Virtual SAN, I'm guessing there's a way to statically define this (we don't want Virtual SAN fighting with Hyper-V for resources)?

Thanks for your time & help!

Sincerely,
-
Doug Mortensen
Impala Networks

[Vladislav (Staff)]

Hi Doug,

StarWind Virtual SAN should be installed on Hyper-V host providing HA storage devices for your virtual machines assuming you plan to use a hyper-converged scenario.
1) No it does not since StarWind Virtual SAN is not a server role but just an additional service that was specially made to operate under server environment.
2) RAM can significantly increase your performance, so the more you will give to StarWind HA device the faster you will go. You can start with RAM cache size like 1% from the total device size and consider using additional flash for L2 cache.

I hope my information was useful for you. If you have any further questions, feel free to go on.

[impaladoug]

Awesome info. Thanks for clarifying!!

Regards,
-
Doug

[Vladislav (Staff)]

You are welcome Doug