Virtual Storage Area Network Solutions

LINBIT VSAN is a turnkey SDS appliance that manages highly available NVMe-oF, iSCSI, and NFS data stores. It uses LINBIT software from LINBIT SDS and LINBIT HA to provide a unified storage cluster management experience with a simple GUI.

Software Defined Storage for VMware Deployments

LINBIT® VSAN is a software defined storage solution (SDS) for small and medium-sized VMware® deployments. We built it with VMware ESXi as a target platform in mind. It can also be used for instance on a x86-based KVM Hypervisors, an Oracle VM Server, or any other Hypervisor software which supports NFS, iSCSI. 

 

Our virtual appliance has direct access to the local HDD, SSD, and NVMe drives. A virtual data store can be created from these resources, which is then presented to the hypervisor via iSCSI. This virtual data store is highly available because the appliance always copies a replica of each block to a second virtual appliance. The number of replicas is customizable.

EASY TO INSTALL, EASY TO USE

LINBIT VSAN can be installed as a virtual appliance from an OVA file. A deployment on bare-metal hardware is also possible. All configuration and administration tasks can be done via the graphical user interface – No LINUX skills required!

FEATURES

2-Way Replicated Volumes
3-Way Replicated Volumes
High Availability Cluster with Quorum
Highly Available
Datastores
Thin Provisioning
Web Dashboard
High Performance
IOPS and Throughput
Open Source -
based on AlmaLinux

EXAMPLE CONFIGURATIONS

Small Configuration

The solution needs at least three servers, but not all of them need to be full-blown virtualization servers. It is sufficient if two of them come with storage devices for the datastore. All writes to the highly available datastores are mirrored between the first two servers. The third is needed to provide quorum in the system during the failure of one machine.

Also regarding the necessary CPU and memory, you have the option to equip either two or all three servers with CPU and memory that is suitable to run guest VMs.

3-Way Redundant Configuration

For highly valuable data a 3-way redundancy configuration is the right choice. Please note that such a three-way configuration can be combined with the model shown above. For example, you could equip server 1 with 2 NVMe drives, server 2 with 2 drives and server 3 with just one drive. 

One of each server is designated for the 3-way redundant datastore, the two remaining for a 2-way redundant data store. But the software is not limited to three-way redundancy – it is also possible to use four or more replicas.

4 Nodes Configuration

Here is a configuration with 4 nodes, that exposes two two-way-redundant datastores to the hypervisor software. All 4 nodes are used to execute VMs of the workload. The LINBIT VSAN appliance scales to 16 nodes in a single cluster.

NOTE: There are many more configurations possible, get in touch with us to discuss the possibilities in the context of your requirements.

Open Appliance With Full Linux Flexibility

This LINBIT VSAN solution contains a broad range of open source technologies: AlmaLinux 8, DRBD®, LINSTOR®, LINSTOR Gateway, and DRBD Reactor. Its focus is to make these complex technologies available to Linux and non-Linux users alike. All of LINBIT’s components are packaged as RPM packages and integrated on top of AlmaLinux 8 as it is best practice in the industry. The root account is available to the user. If an additional monitoring system should be installed, no problem. Open to any customization we at LINBIT did not envision beforehand. For a more technical overview of LINSTOR please check our user guide here.

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