Should I add all of my HD space to VSAN?

[Trey]

I've got 2 nodes with about 5TB capacity on each. Is it recommended to use all the available space to create the mirrored volume or should I keep some for the individual hosts. If we are going to run Starwind then we would want all available VM's to be HA so I would think we would use all the space. Thoughts?

[epalombizio]

Trey,
One thing to consider with a single large HA device is rebuild time. The larger the device is, the longer it'll take to rebuild, and the more time you spend running off of a single node while the rebuild process is happening.

I personally use individual 1TB HA devices since this reduces my exposure to a total failure in a 2 node setup. If I lose the 2nd node for some reason while the individual devices are rebuilding, I might have less rebuilding/restoration to perform if the 2nd fails. Best would be to add a 3rd HA member, but that's not always possible due to budget.

I've also found my self in a position using Starwind these last few years where I wanted to recreate HA images using the newer software versions instead of relying on upgrading, which as we know in technology, isn't always recommended or possible.
Over the years of using Starwind, I've also made changes to caching configuration and size more than once to evaluate the effects on performance and having the multiple devices made this possible for me.

Going with smaller devices will limit the max disk size you can have on a single device, so my advice may or may not make sense in your situation.

Hope this helps and good luck with your eval of Starwind.
Cheers,
Elvis

[Jhon_Smith]

I decided to use HA and not think about rebuild at all. Since when the drive fails, rebuild takes days, but in case when you have copy you can simply destroy RAID and create new one. After that copy all the files and be happy

[Vladislav (Staff)]

Hello Trey,

Please provide the community with an update. Thanks