StarWind Software System Requirements

WHAT YOU NEED TO RUN STARWIND

StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

CPU	Minimum of 4x vCPUs, each at 1.7 GHz (when deployed as CVM) Minimum of 1x physical CPU at 1.7 GHz (when deployed as a Windows application)
RAM	Minimum: 8 GB of RAM Default: 16 GB of RAM For RAM caching, ensure an appropriate amount of additional memory is allocated.
Network interfaces	“Heartbeat” failover strategy: 2x dedicated StarWind VSAN network interfaces (1x Replication network, 1x Data network) 1x dedicated Management network interface “Node Majority” failover strategy: 2x dedicated StarWind VSAN network interfaces (1x Replication network, 1x Data network) 1x dedicated Management network interface (Management + Witness) Note: At least one Heartbeat interface must be on a separate network adapter and redundant
Network Bandwidth	Replication network bandwidth: 1 GbE or higher Replication network latency: <5 ms
Supported hypervisor versions	VMware vSphere (ESXi): 7 or later Windows Server (Hyper-V): 2016 or later oVirt/OLVM/RHV: 4.4 or later Proxmox VE 7.4 or later
Storage	30 GB Virtual Disk reserved for OS (when deployed as CVM). The StarWind devices (LUNs) must reside on the separate storage device or partition from a StarWind CVM virtual disk. For optimal performance, virtual disks for the VSAN Controller Virtual Machine (CVM) must be thick-provisioned, or the entire HBA/RAID controller must be passed through to the CVM. Read more in the KB article. For recommended RAID settings, please read the KB article.

StarWind Virtual HCI Appliance (VHCI)

Supported cluster configurations:

2-node cluster witness-less (Heartbeat);
2-node cluster with a witness node (Node Majority);
3-node cluster (Heartbeat or Node Majority);
GRID (Heartbeat or Node Majority).

Software requirements	Minimal	Optimal
CPU
Architecture	X86-64
Frequency	1.7	2.1 or higher
Cores
For Hyper-V (per-node)	1 or higher	2 or higher
For Hyper-V (per-node)	2 or higher	4 or higher
vCPU
For vSphere (per-node)	2	4
RAM/vRAM	4 GB	8 GB
Network ports	For Heartbeat: 2 x StarWind dedicated (4 x StarWind dedicated in case of 3-node cluster) 1 x Management For Node Majority: 1 x StarWind dedicated 1 x iSCSI dedicated 1 x Management
Network Bandwidth	1 GbE	10 GbE or higher
Supported Operating Systems (Hypervisors)^*	Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022 w/ Hyper-V. Standard or Datacenter; VMware vSphere 6.5, 6.7, 7.0, 8.0. Any update
Network Latency	Less than 5 ms	Less than 2 ms
Storage^**
For Hyper-V (per-node)	3 GB for installed software
For Hyper-V (per-node)	16 GB (Thin VMDK)
	A separate array for data storage recommended

^* StarWind VSAN is a certified storage provider for VMware and Windows Server with Hyper-V.
^** Supported RAID configurations for main data storage you can find here.

StarWind Command Center (Cluster management – Optional)	Minimal	Optimal
vCPU	2	4
vRAM	4 GB	8 GB
Network ports	1 x External Virtual Switch Connection
Storage	50 GB (Dynamic VHDX)

Recommended Hardware Configuration	Minimal	Optimal
Server Vendor	Any
Server Form Factor	Rack, Tower, Edge
TPM	Optional	Recommended
CPU	CPU
Architecture	X86-64
Vendor	AMD or Intel
RAM Configuration	Near Balanced	Balanced
Number of Sockets	1	2 or higher
Storage
Controllers	Redundant or not redundant OS partition; Single controller for OS and Main storage arrays allowed	Redundant OS partition; Separate controllers for OS and Main storage arrays are highly recommended
Storage Media	SAS/SATA HDD; SAS/SATA SSD	SAS/SATA SSD; NVMe
Recommended Vendors	WD DC for HDD; Intel, Micron, KIOXIA for SSD	Intel, Micron, KIOXIA for SSD; Solidigm, Micron, and KIOXIA for NVMe
Networking
Throughput	1 GbE or higher	10 GbE or higher
Type	Ethernet
Number of NICs	2, where: 1 x for Management; 1 x for StarWind
Recommended Vendor	Broadcom, Intel for Management; Intel, Mellanox for StarWind	Intel for Management; Mellanox for StarWind
PSU	Single PSU	Dual, Hot-Plug, Redundant PSU
GPU	Any
BMC	Any Edition	Enterprise or alternative

Important notice: The final hardware configuration should include actual infrastructure needs (client services and VMs) and minimal or optimal configurations of the software described above. To calculate the actual needs of existing infrastructure, StarWind highly recommends the following infrastructure assessment tools – Veeam ONE or Live Optics.

StarWind SAN & NAS

CPU	Minimum 4 virtual 1.7 GHz processors reserved If using ZFS pools, 8 virtual 1.7 GHz processors reserved
RAM	4GB If using cache, an appropriate amount of RAM should be assigned If using ZFS pools, at least 16GB of RAM should be assigned
Network	2x network interfaces (1xManagement and 1xiSCSI/Data traffic) At least one Heartbeat interface must be on a separate network adapter and redundant
Network Bandwidth	iSCSI/Data traffic: Minimum 1 GbE or higher Latency requirements: <5 ms
Hypervisor^*	VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi version: 6.5 or later Microsoft Hyper-V server: 2016 or later
Storage	20 GB Virtual Disk reserved for OS. The StarWind virtual disks must reside on a partition that is separate from the StarWind installation disk. All Virtual Disks are recommended to be Thick Provision Eager Zeroed or the entire HBA/RAID controller must be passed through to the Virtual Machine. Supported direct-attached storage configurations: Passthrough Hardware RAID Controller Passthrough Host Bus Adapter Attach VMDK disks based on top of Datastore Attach Physical disks via RDM

^* StarWind SAN & NAS can be deployed on top of your hypervisor or directly on bare metal (no hypervisor required).
For recommended RAID settings, please, read the KB article.

StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL)

CPU	Minimum of 4x vCPUs, each at 1.7 GHz (when deployed as VM). Minimum of 8x vCPUs, each at 1.7 GHz (when deployed as VM with ZFS pools). Minimum of 1x 1.7 GHz physical CPU (when deployed bare-metal using Linux ISO or as a Windows application).
RAM	Minimum: 8 GB of RAM. If using ZFS pools, at least 16GB of RAM should be assigned.
Network interfaces	1x dedicated Data network interface. 1x dedicated Management network interface.
Network Bandwidth	Data network bandwidth: 100 MbE or higher. Data network latency: <100 ms.
Storage	30 GB virtual disk is reserved for OS (when deployed as VM or as a bare-metal ISO). The VTL devices must reside on the separate storage device or partition from the OS disk. For optimal performance, virtual disks must be thick-provisioned, or the entire HBA/RAID controller must be passed through (when deployed as VM). Read more in the KB article. For recommended RAID settings, please read the KB article.
Supported hypervisor versions	VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi version: 6.5 or later. Windows Server (Hyper-V): 2016 or later. oVirt/OLVM/RHV: 4.4 or later. Proxmox VE 7.4 or later.
Supported backup software	ArcServe Backup 18.0. Commvault (9.0 – 11.20). EMC NetWorker (7.6 – 19.2). IBM i 7.1 or later. HP DataProtector (7.x – 9.0). Microsoft DPM* (2012 – 2019). Unitrends (9.1 – 10). Veeam Backup & Replication (9.0 – 12.1). Veritas BackupExec (12.x – 20.6). Veritas NetBackup (6.x – 8.3).

IMPORTANT: BIOS (Legacy boot mode) is required for bare-metal or VM deployment using Linux ISO. UEFI support will be added in a future release.
Microsoft DPM 2016 may require additional tweaks due to known connection stability issues with LTO Tape Libraries.
IMPORTANT: To ensure ransomware resiliency, the VTL should be located on dedicated storage/host that is isolated from the production environment. Please read the following document for details: Backing up StarWind Virtual SAN Environment: Best Practice.

StarWind Management Console

CPU	Minimum one 1 GHz processor
RAM	256MB
Network	1 NIC interface
Network Bandwidth	Minimum 100 MbE or higher
Supported OS	Server OS: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2; 2012; 2012 R2; 2016; 2019; 2022 Desktop OS: Windows 7; 8; 8.1; 10
Storage	256 МВ disk space reserved for installation and logging

IMPORTANT NOTE: Windows Server Core or Microsoft Hyper-V Server as a base OS is incompatible with the StarWind Management Console local installation. In this case, StarWind Management Console should be installed on any other computer. Please note that for remote management with default settings, port 3261 must be open..