Free Storage for Your Lab
Here is a collection of all the shared storage that I could find that can be installed in to a virtual machine. The rule for this list is: no extra capital investment. You must be able to utilize existing local storage, usually installed in a VM. Also, vSphere compatibility is the focus.
There is no guarantee that the ones labeled as unsupported will work completely with all features of vSphere. Please test (and test).
This is a living document and is open to suggestions.
(Initial sort is by Supportability, then Name, but you can click on a column heading to change)
| Appliance | Type | OS | vSphere Support | SRM Support | Free/Trial | Info/DL Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FalconStor Network Storage Server | iSCSI | Bare metal appliance | Yes | Yes | Trial | NSS VA |
| HP LeftHand VSA | iSCSI | Bare metal appliance | Yes | Yes | Trial | Trial |
| DataCore SANmelody | iSCSI | Windows | Yes | No | Trial | Go Virtual Solution - VMware |
| FalconStor Network Storage Server Lite | iSCSI | Bare metal appliance | Yes | No | Free | NSS VA Lite |
| EMC Celerra Simulator VSA | iSCSI and NFS | Bare metal appliance | No | No [1] | Free | Virtual Geek blog |
| FreeNAS | NFS | Bare metal install | No | No | Free | Home |
| Openfiler | iSCSI and NFS | Bare metal install | No | No | Free | Home |
| StarWind iSCSI | iSCSI | Windows | No | No | Free (with limits) | Free version |
| StorMagic SvSAN | iSCSI | Bare metal appliance | No | No | Free (with limits) | StorMagic ::: SvSAN |
[1] SRM in a Can Setup Guide
Legend:
Type: Type of connection (iSCSI, NFS NAS or both).
OS: For lack of a better term, what sits between the virtual hardware and the user/target. An appliance is defined as an OVF or VMDK that can be downloaded and imported into ESX. “Install” needs to be run on top of a newly created VM. As of this writing, the “Windows” ones need to be installed on top of Windows and no downloadable appliance is available.
vSphere and SRM Support: Remember, “Unsupported” does not mean “Incompatible.” This is just for calling in to VMware support and getting support from them.
More info on this table’s “origin story” at the original blog entry.
StorMagic is also throwing in a 30 Day High Availability license for anyone interested. E-Mail info@StorMagic.com to request your HA license today!
FalconStor also has a free version NSS VA Lite available at http://www.falconstor.com or at http://www.freeiscsisan.com. The NSS VA Lite provides basic storage virtualization and provisioning and data protection services, but does not include replication or High Avaialability support. The NSS 30 Day trial version that can be found at http://www.falconstor.com is a fully funtional version of NSS VA and includes replication and HA support.
Thanks Fadi and Abhik! Table has been updated.
Except of free iSCSI Target Software – StarWind free – StarWind Software company http://www.starwindsoftware.com also has 30-day trial version of StarWind Enterprise Server which include Synchronous Data Mirroring, Remote Replication, CDP&Snapshots, Server Clustering, Thin Provisioning. This version is available for download on https://starwindsoftware.com/download-free-trial