Storage Simulators and VSA Virtual Storage Appliances

TrueNAS VSA

TrueNAS 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

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.

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.