StarWind Manager is currently in preview version and for the moment, it is free. You can download it from this link. This tool provides you real time metrics such as bandwidth, IOPS, CPU usage and so on. You can get also insights about Storage Spaces Direct such as the physical disks, the Cluster Shared Volumes, the jobs which are running etc. In this topic we’ll see how to deploy StarWind Manager and which kind of information you can retrieve.

StarWind Manager roles

StarWind Manager comes with two roles: the StarWind Manager Core and StarWind Manager agent. The agent must be deployed on Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) cluster nodes while the core can be deployed in a VM. The core role provides a web interface to get information about your cluster and takes information from agent. Currently StarWind manager enables to add only nodes. You can’t add entire cluster with a single click.

Deploy StarWind Manager Core role

After you have downloaded StarWind Manager, you can copy the executable to your VM. I have created a VM with 2 vCPU and 4GB of dynamic memory for this. Then run the executable to start the setup wizard. You can achieve the install process quickly because few information are asked.

Select to install StarWind Manager Core and do not install StarWind Manager agent.

That’s all. StarWind Manager Core is installed after the wizard and it is ready to use.

Deploy StarWind Manager Agent role

To install StarWind Manager Agent on your S2D Cluster nodes, copy the installer on servers and run the wizard. It’s work for Windows Server 2016 Core: I have deployed the agents on Core edition in my lab. In the wizard, select StarWind Manager agent and do not install the StarWind Manager Core.

Repeat the agent installation for each S2D cluster node you have.

Connect to StarWind Manager

To connect to StarWind Manager, open a browser and type https://<VM hostname>:8100/client. Default credentials are root / Starwind.

For the moment, StarWind Manager provides only the ability to add S2D cluster nodes. To add nodes, click on … Add New Node.

After you’ve added your nodes, you can retrieve information about your nodes on dashboard pane. You get the status, the IP, the name, the uptime, information about software and hardware.

On performance tab, you can retrieve real time metrics about your node such as CPU utilization, Memory Usage, IOPS and bandwidth.

On Storage Spaces Direct tab you get information about S2D. This pane provides you cluster overview such as the nodes in the cluster the storage capacity and space allocation and the health.

In the same tab, information about Storage Pools and virtual volumes are provided.

You can get also information about physical disks and running jobs.

Conclusion

I’m more than happy that lot of GUI are under development for Storage Spaces Direct. The main disadvantage of the Microsoft solution compared to VMware vSAN or Nutanix is the user experience. But currently Microsoft is working on Honolulu and StarWind is working on this product. Even if both product are under development, they provide clear information about S2D. Now I hope both products will provide in near future easy access to complex S2D operations for day to day administration such has a physical disk removal (place disk in retired mode, enable LED on front of disk, then change the disk and disable LED). From my point of view, this kind of products can heavily help the adoption of Storage Spaces Direct, in hyperconverged or disaggregated model.

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Honolulu is currently in public preview release which means that the product is under construction :). Honolulu is built in a modular way where you can add or remove extensions. Each management feature is included in an extension that you can add or remove. Microsoft expects later that vendors develop third party extensions. To be honest with you, this is the set of tools I’m waiting for a while ago. Microsoft was in late in management tools compared to other companies such as VMware. I hope that Honolulu will close the gap with VMware vCenter and Nutanix Prism.

Microsoft listens customers and feedback to improve this product. So you can download the product here and report feedback in this user voice.

In this topic, we will see an overview of Honolulu. I’ll dedicate a topic about Honolulu and Microsoft hyperconverged solution because Honolulu requires Windows Server 2016 RS3 release (in Semi-Annual Channel) to work with and I have not yet upgraded my lab.

Getting started with Honolulu

In the below screenshot, you can see Honolulu home page. You get all your connections (and the type) and you can add more of them.

By clicking on arrow next to Project Honolulu, you can filter the connection type on Server Manager, Failover Cluster Manager and Hyper-Converged Cluster Manager.

By clicking on the wheel (top right), you can access to extension manager and you get installed extensions. For example you have extensions for firewall management, Hyper-V, failover clustering and so on. You can remove extensions you don’t want.

Sever Manager

As you have seen before, you can manage a single server from Honolulu. I will not show you all management tools but just an overview of Honolulu. By adding and connecting to a server, you get the following dashboard. In this dashboard you can retrieve real-time metrics (CPU, memory and network) and information, you can restart or shutdown the system or edit RDP access and environment variables. For the moment you can’t resize columns and tables and I think in near future that Microsoft will add this feature.

An interesting module is the Events. In this pane, you get the same thing as this good old Event Viewer. You can retrieve all the events of your system and you can filter them. Maybe a checkbox enabling real-time events could be interesting :).

The devices pane is also available. In a single view, you have all hardware installed in the system. If Microsoft adds the ability to install drivers from there, Honolulu can replace DevCon for Core servers.

You can also browse the system files and manage file and folders.

Another pane enables to manage the network adapters as you can see below. For the moment this pane is limited because it doesn’t allow to manage advanced feature such as RDMA, RSS, VMMQ and so on.

You can also add or remove roles and features from Honolulu. It is really cool that you can manage this from a Web service.

If you use Hyper-V, you can manage VMs from Honoulu. The dashboard also is really nice because there is counters about VMs and last events.

Another super cool feature is the ability to manage updates from Honolulu. I hope Microsoft will add WSUS configuration from this pane with some scheduling.

Failover Cluster management

Honolulu enables also to manage failover cluster. You can add a failover cluster connection from Honolulu home page. Just click on Add.

Then specify the cluster name. Honolulu asks if you want to add also the servers member of the cluster.

One it is added, you can select it and you get this dashboard. You get cluster core ressource states, and some information about the cluster such as the number of roles, networks and disks.

By clicking on disks, you can get a list of Cluster Shared Volumes in the cluster and information about them.

If your cluster hosts Hyper-V VMs (not in hyperconverged way), you can manage VMs from there. You get the same pane than in Honolulu server manager. The VMs and related metrics are shown and you can create or delete virtual machines. A limited set of option is currently available.

You can also get the vSwitches deployed in each node. It’s pitty that Switch Embedded Teaming is not yet supported but I think the support will be added later.

Hyperconverged cluster management

As I said earlier, hyperconverged cluster is supported but only for Windows Server Semi-Annual channel (for the moment). I’ll dedicate a topic about Honolulu and hyperconverged cluster once I’ll upgrade my lab.

Update Honolulu

When a Honolulu update is released, you get notified by Update Available mention. Currently, the update process is not really user-friendly because when you click on Update Available, an executable is downloaded and you have to run again the Honolulu installation (specify installation path, certificate thumbprint etc.). I hope in the future that the update process will be a self-update.

When I have downloaded the executable, I checked the package size and it is amazing: only 31MB.

Conclusion

Finally, they did it! A true modern management tool. I try for Microsoft this tool for 3 months and I can say you that developers work really quickly and they make a great job. Features are added quickly and Microsoft listens customers. I recommend you to post in the user voice the features you want. The tool is currently not perfect, some features are missing but Honolulu is still in preview release ! Microsoft is in the right direction with Honolulu and I hope this tool will be massively used. I hope also that Honolulu will help to install more Windows Server in Core edition, especially for Hyper-V and storage server.

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