Where to Download and How to Set Up Free Storage Simulators and VSA Virtual Storage Appliances

For your lab you’re going to need compute (the servers), networking (routers and switches etc.) and storage. If you’re focused on studying or testing only an individual application, operating system or the network infrastructure then you can probably get away with no more storage than the local hard drive in your PC. If you want to learn how cloud and data center technologies work as a whole however you’re going to need dedicated external storage such as a storage simulator or VSA (Virtual Storage Appliance). And it’s a definite requirement if you’re studying hypervisor technologies such as VMware vSphere.

You’re already going to have to shell out for compute hardware and any network infrastructure devices which can’t be virtualised. Unless you have more money than you know what to do with, you’re probably going to want to keep the storage costs down by using a Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) or storage simulator.

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List of VSA Virtual Storage Appliances, Storage Simulators, SAN and NAS Demos

I’ve compiled a list of where you can find storage simulators and Virtual Storage Appliances for free below. It’s a pretty big list, so here’s some advice if you don’t know which one to choose:

If you want your lab to mimic your organisation’s production environment as closely as possible, then pick the VSA or simulator from your storage vendor. Where the same vendor has multiple simulators available, I’ve listed their newest and most lab friendly option first.

If you want the simplest option to get up and running for studying a hypervisor technology like VMware vSphere, use FreeNAS or StarWind.

I’ve also listed GUI demos at the bottom of the list. These aren’t suitable for a lab but are useful if you want to explore the look and feel of a particular vendor’s storage GUI.

The software is all free but may require a customer or partner account with the vendor to download. I’ve listed the login and system requirements for each option below.

Storage Simulators and VSA Virtual Storage Appliances

FreeNAS VSA

StarWind Virtual SAN VSA

OSNexux QuantaStor Community Edition VSA

Open Media Vault VSA

OpenFiler Unified Storage VSA

NetApp ONTAP Simulator

NetApp ONTAP Select VSA

NetApp Element Demo Node VSA

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Simulator

HPE StoreVirtual VSA

Dell EMC UnityVSA

Dell EMC ViPR Software Defined Storage

Dell EMC OneFS Isilon Simulator

Dell EMC IsilonSD Edge

Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Domain Virtual Edition – Community Edition

Dell EMC ECS Community Edition

Oracle ZFS Storage Simulator

IBM Spectrum Scale Virtual Machine

HDS HCS Simulator

HPE Nimble Virtual Array VSA

Nutanix Community Edition

Synology DSM XPEnology Simulator

NexentaStor Community Edition VSA

QUADStor Storage Virtualization VSA

Datacore Hyperconverged Virtual SAN

StorMagic SvSAN Trial

Storage GUI demo only

Dell EMC Interactive Demos

IBM StorWize V-Series Demo

Huawei OceanStor Demo

Synology DSM NAS Demo

QNAP QTS NAS Demo

Thecus NAS Demo

NetGear ReadyNAS NAS Demo

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Storage Simulators and VSA Virtual Storage Appliances

FreeNAS VSA

FreeNAS supports iSCSI SAN in addition to NFS and SMB NAS protocols.

System Requirements

Has its own operating system. You can install it bare metal or in your choice of virtual machine

64-bit CPU

Minimum 8GB RAM (16GB recommended)

8GB Boot drive (can use USB)

Installer: 508MB

Download Link (No Login Account Required)

Installation and First Time Setup Wizard videos

StarWind Virtual SAN Free VSA

StarWind supports NFS and SMB NAS protocols in addition to iSCSI SAN.

System Requirements

VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V or Windows Server

Minimum 4GB RAM

42GB Disk space per node

Installer: 336MB

Download Link (Guest Login Account Required)

Getting Started Guide

OSNexux QuantaStor Community Edition VSA

QuantaStor supports iSCSI, Fibre Channel (if you have a Qlogic HBA), NFS, SMB and Object Storage.

The Community Edition has a 40TB capacity limit and a renewable 2 year free licence.

System Requirements

Has its own operating system. You can install it bare metal or in your choice of virtual machine

Minimum 4GB RAM (16GB recommended)

2x SSDs for system/boot drives

64GB Disk space for boot drive

Installer: 1GB ISO image or 1.9GB OVA

Download Link (Enter email on page to request Community Edition licence)

Installation Guide

Open Media Vault VSA

System Requirements

Runs on Debian Linux which is included in installation

Minimum 1GB RAM

Minimum 4GB Disk space

Installer: 489MB

Download Link (No Login Account Required)

Documentation including the Installation Guide.

Openfiler Unified Storage VSA

System Requirements

VMware ESXi, Workstation family, or Citrix Xen

Minimum 4GB RAM

12GB Disk space

Installer: 508MB

Download Link (No Login Account Required)

Graphical Installation Guide

NetApp ONTAP Simulator

System Requirements

VMware Workstation Family: 5 GB RAM per node

VMware ESXi: 8 GB RAM per node

40 GB free disk space per node

(The old version 8.2 simulator requires only 2GB RAM per node and can be downloaded from the same page.)

Installer size: 600MB

Download Link (Customer or Partner Login Account Required)

I have step by step instructions on How to Build a NetApp Simulator ONTAP 9 Lab

NetApp ONTAP Select VSA

90 day 2TB Evaluation

System Requirements

The simulator configuration requires deploying two VMs; the Select Node and the Select Deploy Administration Utility.

VMware ESXi

ONTAP Select Node:

Intel CPU 25xx v3 (Haswell) or higher with 6 physical cores or greater

24GB RAM

2x 10Gb Ethernet ports

ONTAP Select Deploy Administration Utility

2 VCPUs

4GB RAM

40GB Disk space

Installer: 2.2GB

Download Link (Customer or Partner Login Account Required)

Quick Start Guide

Documentation including Installation and Setup Guide

NetApp Element Demo Node VSA

System Requirements

VMware ESXi

240GB total capacity (The size and number of virtual disks for the VM cannot be changed. Any additional storage presented via the hypervisor will be ignored by the guest OS.)

60GB root disk

One 30GB metadata drive, thick provisioned/eager zeroed

Three 50GB block drives, thick provisioned/eager zeroed

2 vCPU (fully reserved)

16GB RAM (fully reserved)

Single HBA for all disks, LSI Logic parallel

2 vNICs, both vmxnet3 (one management, one storage)

Download Link (Customer or Partner Login Account Required)

Installation and Setup Guide

HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprises) 3PAR StoreServ Simulator

System Requirements

The simulator configuration requires deploying three VMs; two VMs simulating the cluster nodes, a third VM to simulate the enclosure and private network configuration to enable communication between the three VMs.

VMware ESXi or Workstation family

One virtual CPU (single core)

Three virtual NICs

2GB RAM

50GB disk space (full or thin-provisioned)

Installer: 9.52GB

Download Link (Guest Login Account Required)

d8taDude has setup instructions for the 3PAR simulator on his blog.

HPE StoreVirtual VSA

3 Year 1TB Evaluation

System Requirements

Hyper-V, vSphere or KVM

2 VCPU

5GB RAM

Centralised Management Console for Windows or Linux is downloaded from the same link

Installer: 600MB including Centralised Management Console

Download Link (Guest Login Account Required)

Michele Domanico has setup instructions for the StoreVirtual VSA on his blog.

Dell EMC UnityVSA

System Requirements

VMware ESXi

2 VCPU

16GB RAM

6 vNICs

Centralised Management Console for Windows or Linux is downloaded from the same link

Installer: 2.27GB

Download Link

UnityVSA has replaced the vVNX simulator.

Documentation including an Installation Video and Guide is available on the download page.

Piotr Pisz has setup instructions for the Dell EMC UnityVSA on his blog.

Dell EMC ViPR Software Defined Storage

System Requirements

VMware vCenter Server with DRS enabled and VMFS5 on shared block storage.

Installer: 2.6GB

ViPR Controller vApp:

2 VCPUs

8GB RAM

120GB Disk Space

ViPR Controller Reporting vApp:

4 VCPUs

32GB RAM

600GB Disk Space

Download Link

ViPR Controller Free Download Quick Start Guide

Dell EMC OneFS Isilon Simulator

System Requirements

VMware Workstation, Fusion or ESXi

Minimum 2GB RAM (6GB recommended)

42GB Disk space per node

Installer: 294MB

Download Link (No Login Account Required)

Isilon OneFS Simulator Install Guide

Dell EMC IsilonSD Edge

The IsilonSD Edge download package includes:

Management Server, a VMware vCenter plug-in

Isilon OneFS operating system software in an Open Virtualization Archive (OVA) file

Isilon InsightIQ software

System Requirements

CPU: 2 vCPUs per node

RAM: Min. 6 GB per node

OS: VMware ESXi and vCenter

Networks: 2 networks (or VLANs)

Download Link (No Login Account Required)

An Installation Guide is included with the download

Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Domain Virtual Edition - Community Edition

The trial Community Edition is limited to 0.5TB storage space.

System Requirements

VMware ESXi or Hyper-V

6GB RAM

250GB root disk

10GB NVRAM disk

Installer: 1.7GB

Download Link (Guest Login Account Required)

Documentation including an Installation Video and Guide is available on the download page.

Dell EMC ECS Community Edition

ECS delivers a free object storage/HDFS solution.

System Requirements

Minimal installation of the latest CentOS release.

4 CPU Cores.

16GB RAM.

16GB root block storage.

104GB additional block storage.

Installer: 2GB

Download Link

Installation Guide

Oracle ZFS Storage Simulator

System Requirements

VMware Workstation family or VirtualBox

2.5GB RAM

125GB Disk space

Installer: 688MB

Download Link (Guest Login Account Required)

Quick Start Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale Virtual Machine

90 day Trial

System Requirements

VMware ESXi, Linux KVM or VirtualBox

1 VCPU

3.5GB RAM

19GB Disk space

Installer: 899MB

Download Link (Guest Login Account Required)

A Quick Start Guide, Advanced User Guide and Explore Guide are available on the download page.

HDS (Hitachi Data Systems) HCS (Hitachi Command Suite) Simulator

Download Link (HDS Partner Login Account Required)

HPE Nimble Virtual Array

System Requirements

Runs on VMware

2 VCPU

4GB RAM

Download Link (Nimble Employee or Partner Login Account Required)

Kyle Jenner has setup instructions for the Nimble Virtual Array on his blog.

Nutanix Community Edition

System Requirements

Runs on 1, 3 or 4 phyical servers. Each must have:

Intel CPU with 4 cores minimum

16GB RAM

200GB SSD for Hot Tier

500GB HDD for Cold Tier

Installer: 2.9GB

Download Link (Guest Login Account Required)

Getting Started Guide.

Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) XPEnology Simulator

System Requirements

VMware ESXi or Workstation family

2 VCPU

4GB RAM

16GB Disk Space

Installer: 200MB

Download Link (No Login Account Required)

Alex Lopez has setup instructions for the XPEnology Simulator on his blog.

NexentaStor Community Edition VSA

NexentaStor provides a unified file and block storage solution for NFS, SMB and iSCSI. The free Community Edition is limited to 10TB storage. A 45 day trial of the full enterprise product is also available.

System Requirements

64-bit CPU

4GB RAM (8GB recommended)

12GB Boot drive minimum (20GB-30GB recommended for updates)

Installer: 613MB

Download Link (Guest Login Account Required. The license and installation file is sent a day after you request it.)

Configuration Quick Start Guide is available on the Documentation page.

QUADStor Storage Virtualization VSA

QUADStor provides a free file and block storage solution.

System Requirements

64-bit CPU

4 GB RAM (8 GB for NAS)

RHEL/Centos 6/7, SLES 12 SP3 or Debian squeeze 7/8 for x86_64/AMD64 architecture

QLogic 24xx/25xx HBA for Fiber Channel connectivity

Ethernet ports for iSCSI connectivity

Download Link

Installation Guide is available on the Documentation page.

Datacore SANsymphony Virtual SAN

System Requirements

VMware ESXi or Bare metal Windows Server (Hyper-V not supported)

2 core 64-bit CPU

8GB RAM

20GB Disk space

Installer: 7GB for VMware, 194MB for Windows

Download Link (Email Signup Required)

Getting Started Guide.

StorMagic SvSAN Trial

10 day Trial, extendable to 40 days

System Requirements

SvSAN Node:

VMware ESXi, Microsoft Windows Server 2016 or Hyper-V

1 VCPU

1GB RAM

512MB Boot device plus 20GB Journal Disk space

Witness Appliance:

VMware ESXi, Microsoft Windows Server 2016 or Hyper-V

1 VCPU

512MB RAM

512MB Disk space

Installer: 899MB

Download Link (StorMagic sales team will contact you to set up trial)

GUI Demo Only

Dell EMC Interactive Demos

Dell EMC interactive demos can be found here:

https://democenter.dell.com/interactive

Enter the name of the demo you want to access in the Search box. Currently available:

SC SERIES

SCV3000 DEPLOYMENT WIZARD

XTREMIO

IBM StorWize V-Series Demo

System Requirements

This is a web based demo of the IBM StorWize V-Series GUI which runs on a Windows client

Installer: 162MB

Download Link (IBMid Login Account Required) for V7000 demo.

Download Link (IBMid Login Account Required) for V5000 demo.

Setup instructions are included in the downloaded zip file.

Huawei OceanStor Demo

System Requirements

This is a Flash based demo of the Huawei OceanStor GUI which runs on a Windows client

1GB disk space

Installer: 224MB

Download Link and Installation Guides (No Login Account Required)

Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) NAS Demo

System Requirements

This is a web based demo of the Synology DSM GUI

Demo Link (No login account required)

QNAP QTS NAS Demo

System Requirements

This is a web based demo of the QNAP QTS GUI

Demo Link (No login account required)

Thecus NAS Demo

System Requirements

This is a web based demo of the ThecusOS GUI

Demo Link (No login account required)

NetGear ReadyNAS NAS Demo

System Requirements

This is a web based demo of the NetGear ReadyNAS GUI

Demo Link (No login account required)

Thanks to Simon Seagrave for his article listing the EMC simulators.

Have I missed anything from the list? Please let me know via email to neil[at]flackbox.com

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