StarWind Software

Hi all,

We're about to deploy 3 new hosts with StarWind 8 to replace our existing 3-host, SW 6 setup. Any help would be greatly appreciated here as we're currently just running some tests:

I think we've got SMI-S pretty well sorted out -- I've been able to set up the agent, add it to SCVMM, create an HA LUN, etc. Can you configure 3-way replication via SMI-S, perhaps by editing the smis-config.sml file? If not, is there any issue with manually adding the third host as a replication partner through StarWind after creating the LUN through SMI-S? And what is ultimately the main benefit of SMI-S anyway? Is it simply to consolidate management by allowing you to do it all through SCVMM?

As part of our testing I migrated a few VM's to one of the HA LUNS I created, then yanked the power cables of host 1. Everything worked as expected as host 2 provided access to each of the VM's. When I powered host 1 back on, each of the HA LUNS started to perform a full sync. Is this necessary? We were hoping a partial sync or whatever you call it would occur.

Cheers,

Brian

Hello Brian,

3-way replication can be configured via SMI-S initially if the config file has the proper pool of nodes (3 nodes mentioned there). The 3rd node can be added via StarWind Management Console if 2 node device was initially created.

Basically, SMI-S is used to make management easier and to let SCVMM rule.

Partial (fast) sync requires a clean shutdown. If the shutdown is dirty, then the full sync is an only possible option.

JFYI https://www.starwindsoftware.com/techni ... -SMI-S.pdf

Thanks Vitaliq! We'll take a look at SMI-S later but for now, we're pretty used to creating and connecting to LUN's without it.

You are welcome.

Please keep us posted.