Welcome to the first installment of our new first-hand experience blog series. Our new Technical Marketing Manager, Dennis Smith, will guide you through a first-hand product installation of SvSAN.
If you’re not familiar with StorMagic SvSAN, it’s a lightweight, cost-effective virtual SAN designed specifically for edge computing and small data center environments. It eliminates the need for physical SANs by mirroring internal storage between two servers, creating a highly available, shared storage pool.
In this blog, we’ll follow our StorMagic documentation to install SvSAN on VMware vSphere. This entire process is conducted in Dennis’s lab environment. Here’s how it went!
Watch the Installation Process Video (Watch Time: 3 minutes)
The installation process was recorded and condensed into a 3-minute video. This video skips some of the deployment wait times, which weren’t bad at all. This helpful video demonstrates the process in action and is intended to guide you more than reading documentation alone.
The beauty of SvSAN is how it transforms standard servers into a high availability storage solution without specialized hardware. The straightforward, user-friendly installation process demonstrates that SvSAN is a compelling option for edge computing and remote office deployments.
The Installation Process
Setup
Start with a standard VMware vSphere environment running in my lab, which consists of two ESXi hosts managed by vCenter. This setup is ideal for testing SvSAN’s high availability features.
Follow StorMagic Documentation
The SvSAN installation documentation centers on deploying a plugin for vSphere that runs on a virtual machine (VM) in your vCenter. This plugin is what makes SvSAN tick.
To get started, request the SvSAN free trial license, available here. The documentation clearly outlined the prerequisites:
- DNS resolution (this is important because vCenter pulls the plugin from the VM via hostname)
- IP address, hostname, and login credentials ready to go
Deployment
Logging into the vSphere HTML5 client, I navigate to my hosts and select “Deploy OVF Template.” I browse to the SvSAN OVA file and begin the deployment wizard. I give the VM a descriptive name (“DS-Plugin”) and select the destination host. After reviewing the details and accepting the license agreements, I reach the storage configuration page.
For networking, I make sure to select the same network used by vCenter and ESXi management traffic—this step is crucial and clearly outlined in the documentation.
Next comes customization. I enter a username and password for the plugin VM, followed by the hostname, domain, DNS server, gateway, and NTP server. Since static IPs are recommended for production environments, I uncheck DHCP and manually enter the IP configuration. After a final review, everything looks good, so I click Finish and let the deployment run.
Powering On and Registration
After the OVA is deployed, I power on the VM and wait for it to boot completely. This created an Ubuntu VM running the SvSAN plugin services.
The next step was registering the plugin with vCenter. Opening a console to the VM, I log in using the credentials I’d specified during deployment and ran the registration command:
sudo /opt/stormagic/SvSAN/bin/configure_plugin.sh -o register -v <vcsa_name> -u<username> -p <password>
When prompted, I enter my password, and after a few moments, I receive confirmation that the plugin has registered successfully.
The Result
Refreshing the vSphere Client showed the newly available SvSAN plugin. The integration was seamless and everything was accessible on the familiar vSphere interface. There’s no need to learn a separate management console.
Key Takeaways from the Installation Process
The StorMagic documentation does a great job at guiding users through installation. The process was straightforward, with clear explanations at each step.
If I were to emphasize anything to new users, it would be:
- Don’t skip the DNS resolution requirement
- Be deliberate about network selection during deployment
- Remember that you’re responsible for maintaining the Ubuntu VM (patching, updates, etc.)
Have you installed SvSAN in your environment? We’d love to hear about your experience compared to mine! Leave a comment or contact us directly.
