StarWind Software

I am having a problem connecting to the targets on my StarWind servers. I have all of the drives setup: 1GB Witness, 6TB CSV01 and 2TB CSV02. They are all configured as HAImage and they are all synchronized. When I try to connect to them from my Hyper-V cluster machines I get an error that pops up that sys Service Unavailable on the cluster machines and then on the StarWind machines I get a message that pops up and says "High Availability Device "iqn....", client connection 'iqn...' has been rejected because of license restrictions. I am using the Free version and I have been following the instructions in: Starwind-virtual-san-compute-and-storage-separated-2-nodes-with-Hyper-v-cluster.pdf

Can you please advise me on what I am doing wrong?

John
Systems Administrator
Electro-Core, Inc.

Hi John

As for your Starwind Servers: have u installed Hyper-V roles on them?

You can not connect StarWind Free version targets to other machines via iSCSI. Only SMB\NAS is available.

On the StarWind servers there is nothing else installed. I have a Hyper-V cluster that I am trying to connect to the StarWind servers to have HA storage for my cluster. Is there instructions on how to configure the free version as SMB or NAS? I only have experience with iSCSI.

check the Starwind Resource library. There should be a guide. Something like "how to create Scale-out file server with Hyper-v.."

Hi Jerachow,

You need to install and configure Scale-Out File Server and present this SMB share to your Hyper-V machines.
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/config ... in-ws-2012
This guide I believe has the necessary part of Windows 2012 Cluster setup.

darklight wrote:Hi Jerachow,

You need to install and configure Scale-Out File Server and present this SMB share to your Hyper-V machines.
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/config ... in-ws-2012
This guide I believe has the necessary part of Windows 2012 Cluster setup.

Are there instructions on how to do this with Windows 2008 R2? We have not updated to 2012 and have no intentions to do so since 2008 R2 has met our needs. I have searched all over and cannot find any resources to make this work.

if i'm not mistaking, scale-out file server role isn't applicable to Windows server 2008 r2. The essential requirements for MS SMB Scale-Out File server are:
- minimum 2-nodes Failover cluster running Windows server 2012;
- shared folder (either folders) with continuous availability approach created on the CSV-volume;
- clients supports SMB Transparent Failover (SMB 3.0 required).

You're absolutely correct. You need to have Windows Server 2012 (R2 is actually recommended as it has SMB protocol server-side, SoFS implementation and CSV ownership change sequence improved greatly) to have Scale-Out File Server.

nohope wrote:if i'm not mistaking, scale-out file server role isn't applicable to Windows server 2008 r2. The essential requirements for MS SMB Scale-Out File server are:
- minimum 2-nodes Failover cluster running Windows server 2012;
- shared folder (either folders) with continuous availability approach created on the CSV-volume;
- clients supports SMB Transparent Failover (SMB 3.0 required).

Is this also true for the free version if you are using VMWare and want to mirror between two nodes? We currently use iSCSI and it works great with one node. And we too are using Windows 2008 and don't want to go to 2012. The only difference is our hosts are vmware. So are we going to be forced to upgrade our one Starwind server and move to SMB rather than use iSCSI if we want to mirror between two nodes for the free version?

Thank You

Free version goes only with SMB/NFS. For pure iSCSI you have to buy a full one.

Thank you for the info. That is disappointing. So with a Single node I can do iSCSI, but if I want to mirror it I have to do SMB or NFS. Pardon my ignorance, does that mean I also have to move to Windows Server 2012, thats something I really don't want to do if I can do this with 2008 R2.

Thank You

You've made proper conclusions. Free version isn't intended to use in production scenarios, actually. So if u wanna to get mirror between 2 nodes, and don't wanna rebuild (it's meant "to move to Windows Server 2012") your working environment, then will buy the commercial version, which is eligible for most production purposes, and proceed to use the Windows Server 2008.

Well, actually free version is intended and even allowed for production scenarios, however, it's just needs some more specific requirements. I personally use the free version on some sites. It's quite simple if you have two dedicated servers. But of course, you need SoFS for it, that's true.

Anything else I can help you with here?