First time beta tester here. Here are some suggestions/feedback in no particular order:
- On all wizard pages with option buttons: Cursor keys should select/change the options. For example when creating a new target I should be able to create it just by pressing Up/Down and Enter. All regular Windows wizards work like this (for example IE's first start wizard)
- Get rid of the skins. Makes your product look like a toy.
- Update the help page of "Creating new high availability device/Step 6". Sync and heartbeat-interface-Explanation is missing
- "Add target wizard/Data synchronization channel parameters": When seleting "(none)" the partner interface should also switch to "(none)". Also I don't quite understand what the refresh buttons are there for.
- Help should explain cache modes (write through vs. write back)
- It would be nice for testers/first time users if "starwind" was saved already in the management UI. If you don't want to do it, at least describe it right there (or at least in the help). It took me some minutes to find out what the password is. It would be better to configure anonymous access by default (and a reminder to change the password) - because keeping the default account/passwort doesn't improve security over using no credentials at all.
- How can I change caching settings of a target after its creation?
- When scrolling logs with the scroll wheel the cursor should scroll with the text (not move relative)
- The first initial sync of the first target I created failed (Logs in ).
- Rename the label "Cache size in mb" to "Maximum cache size (mb)". This change would remove the need of the descriptive label below it.
- The distinction between "mirror (raid-1) device" and "high availability device" is a bit unclear. Neither the manual nor the UI provide any guidance as to when one should choose one over the other.
- The "About high availability devices" topic is empty in help
- Can I resize (HA) targets after creation?
- The pdf's on the website should not be secured. I wanted to copy things like the MPIO hardware id's but found myself unable to do so.
- Why do your write all 0 to the image file when initializing an image file? NTFS guarantees that a newly created file is already zeroed. Maybe the wizard is just unclear and I selected the wrong options. This problem occurs with the default options.
- The service startup should not be set as "Automatic (delayed)" but instead use the service notification functionality in Vista/7/2008 so the service is started as soon as the network stack is ready. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd405512.aspx. If you don't want to do this, just start the service and wait then for the availability of the network stack.
- The management console should save the layout/splitter positions.
- The eventlog should be sorted by time, newest first. The windows eventlog is sorted the same way.
- Usability issue: It is non-obvious that syncing HA nodes works with the normal iSCSI connections. I disconnected the target and re-added it (to add it as a favourite target). Disconnecting the target broke the sync. It would be helpful to
a) Tell the user that iSCSI connections via initiater is used by StarWind itself
b) Add targets as favorites by default - All the PDFs explaining Microsoft Failover Cluster things on the website: Bringing the disk online is not necessary. It is enough to initialize and format the disk on one node. Bringing the disk online on other nodes will corrupt NTFS and means that you have to reformat the disk again after bringing it online on all nodes.
- The selected performance counter should stay selected when switching between servers. I'd like to compare the performance of two servers - this is cumbersome to do with the current UI.
- An overview page of all important performance counters combined on a single screen (not necessarily in a single graph) would be nice. Some sort of a performance dashboard. Something like the first page of the "Resource Monitor" in Windows.
- In stats: "mbps"? Is that mb/s or megabits/s? On the disks? Over the network? Is sync traffic included?
- In stats: The most recent data point is always 0. Hide it.
- On HA: Your current model of HA is broken. There's *NO* reliable way for HA failover with a two-node cluster. Adding additional, redundant links just makes the problem less obvious. You need a third witness node, a quorum or only do failover on shutdowns. Automatic failover otherwise *WILL* produce a split brain scenario under some circumstances. Is there a way to configure StarWind to only failover when the primary node is shut down in a controlled way? And is there way to do manual failover?
Cheers,
Simon