It has been a while since we've released our new updated StarWind Virtual SAN Free but questions keep coming... So I've decided to take a break and find some time to address all of them once and forever
Results of my attempt are below. Some history to start from. We've been giving away free version for almost 10 years now. Functionality did change dramatically. First it was single-node basic version with iSCSI target functionality. Microsoft had no iSCSI target @ that time and has Storage Server with iSCSI target later so we've been popular like hell. In 2010 Microsoft released their (OK, it was actually String Bean iSCSI but who cares...) iSCSI target free of charge to anybody and in 2012 included into Windows Server 2012. Nobody needed StarWind free stuff anymore
So we've decided to give away now HA version of iSCSI target but with capacity limitation (not to destroy our sales). Somebody decided to stick with 128 GB so people could "try a little bit of HA" (c) Joe. This version had moderate popularity but more people complained about limited capacity then actually used our stuff. Then recently in late 2014 we started giving away now hyper-converged version of our stuff. It was a killer! No capacity limitation, production use allowed, all features there. Nice... Except it was too complex to configure properly so people were building clumsy setups and complaining about performance. Our support staff actually expected NOT to help to "free" users was overloaded with actually helping to students, consultants, admins w/out business case in mind etc. Just because we typically suspect it's OUR fault when something goes wrong. In MOST cases however it was as simple as broken setup. Hyper-Converged thing is GREAT when done properly but huge PITA if not. Then we've moved hyper-converged setup into VMs to simplify the things. It worked but up to some level... Still issues with configs and still hell of questions to support. So we decided to withdraw this offering and stop giving away hyper-converged version to everybody. We still give it away to limited amount of people who we know CAN do proper setups (SpiceWorks users with high spice level, Microsoft MVPs and MCTs and VARs). So these guys are WELCOME to drop us an e-mail asking about hyper-converged version capable of running N-node cluster and feeding shared storage from 2-nodes only. Pure 2-node setups are also OK. Just for reference here are some pics of what we can do with this version:(see pictures in attachment)
You can read & apply for SpiceWorks related version here:
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1 ... irtual-san
and for MVPs & MCTs and VARs please contact sales using ordinary sales@starwind.com alias
We found SMB3/NFSv4.1 LUN-less "Compute and Storage Separated" version of StarWind Virtual SAN being MUCH easier to configure and run. See here:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwi ... l-san-free
Making long story short:
StarWind Virtual SAN Free takes two brand new or decommissioned from other project servers and turns them into DIY dual-controller “shared nothing” fault-tolerant SAN and NAS by “mirroring” their internal storage between them. High available iSCSI SAN functionality is kept for “internal housekeeping” thus inter-node communications and Continuously Available SMB 3.02 (SMB3) shares and Failover NFSv4.1 (NFS) mount points are exposed to storage consumers. Everything is done to simplify installation, support and possible troubleshooting. Something like on a picture below:
Whole story for Free Vs. Paid can be found here:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/styles ... s_Paid.pdf
So if you think there's anything else we can do to boost your virtualized infrastructure please let us know. We'd be happy to help
