How to update StarWind VSAN

If you're running StarWind VSAN, from time to time you'll need to update the solution. As you know, StarWind VSAN can be used for many different solutions and not only as a shared storage for VMware vSphere or shared-nothing shared storage for Hyper-V.

StarWind VSAN is a software-defined storage solution that is able to provide you with high performance and data high availability starting with two nodes already (no witness entity necessary). High Availability (HA) is done by providing multipath access to all storage nodes.

StarWind VSAN performs better than any dedicated SAN solution since it runs locally on the hypervisor and all I/O is processed by local RAM, SSD cache, and disks. This way it never gets bottlenecked by storage fabric (storage network)!

We have written a number of posts about the details of how the HA without witness works, how you can do more with storage pool and multiple nodes and more:

Whether you run StarWind on Hyper-V or VMware ESXi or vSphere, the steps differ, obviously. Here is the follow-up procedure with steps to upgrade StarWind VSAN running on VMware ESXi.

For the VMware ESXi environments with StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere:

Check that all StarWind devices have the Synchronized status on all nodes. Simply fire up the StarWind console (I have setup the console on my management workstation runninw Windows 11) and check the nodes.

Check that each Datastore on each host has active paths from all StarWind nodes
Login to StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere web client (https://%VSAN_IP%:9090) on your first host

Default Login: user
Deffault Pass: rds123RDS

StarWind runs a Linux OS (CentOS) with an UI called Cockpit which is accessible through the port 9090.

Go to the terminal web page and download the update using the following cmdlet:

# sudo wget https://ovf.starwind.com/tmplink/starwind-update.tar.gz

The terminal window opens directly from within the menu which is convenient. You can copy-paste the commands there.

Unpack the updater:

# sudo tar -xf starwind-update.tar.gz

Start the update procedure:

# sudo ./starwind_update.run

The updater will compare StarWind Virtual SAN version and check if update is needed. In addition, kernel and system updates will be installed.

Note: I had to add –no-check-certificate at the end of the command. If not the updater was complaining about not verified certificate.

After the successful update the StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere will be rebooted.
Wait until StarWind VSAN for vSphere starts, and the synchronization process is completed.
Check that all StarWind devices have the Synchronized status on all nodes.
Check that all iSCSI connections are restored after the node update.
Repeat the steps above on the remaining StarWind nodes one by one.

You're done. -:)

Check the StarWind blog article Upgrading from any StarWind version to any StarWind version for details about how to upgrade from which version to what versions. There is a big table with many details.

How to update StarWind VSAN – VMware or Hyper-V

More interesting posts about StarWind on ESX Virtualization Blog: