Hi, Can no one from StarWind offer advice on how to benchmark so that I can see evidence that StarWind's read-cache enabled iSCSI target will consistently outperform the MS iSCSI target v3.3? So far, I'm not really seeing a lot of benefit for real-world workloads other than perhaps purely sequential...

Hi, I should have mentioned one more very important workload - PHD Virtual Backup v6.2 We use that software to backup all of our VMs to a dedup store on our SAN. The quicker the SAN, the smaller our backup window needs to be at night. We have both east coast and west coast customers, so reducing the...

Bunch of different workloads, few of them are disk intensive though... We are a Citrix Service Provider so most of our VMs are Citrix Xenapp servers... We have three file servers, two SQL servers (just used for accounting software, nothing very intensive), a vCenter VM, and a couple of web servers (...

Hi, I'm currently evaluating StarWind and have already collected performance data using IOMeter (for 4K, 8K, 16K, 32K , 64K, 128K, and 256K IO sizes). I'm using the following IOMeter config parameters for each IO size: Max disk size: 30000000 sectors (15GB file) # of outstanding IOs: 16 # of workers...

Hi, Agreed, there's a problem with the definition of RAID "stripe size" and it seems to be industry wide , with conflicting definitions for "stripe size" muddying the waters. Pretty confusing as an end user. All that really matters to me is that I get the correct value for "...

Hi, The Dell Perc 6i controller on the PowerVault NX3000 provides an advanced option for setting the stripe size of the RAID-10 array. However, the setting is actually labeled "Stripe Element Size" (which is 64K by default) and the description in the manual reads: Stripe Element Size speci...

Hi Anton,

I'm hoping to begin testing with StarWind target this week. I've got the hardware ready to go.

Whenever you have a chance, please comment on the questions in my last post...

Thanks,

Alan

Hi Anton, Thanks for the explanations... Currently, we have a Dell PowerVault NX3000 (single Xeon L5520 CPU, 3 GB DDR3 RAM, PERC 6i RAID cntrl) with (4) 2 TB SATA drives in a RAID-5 configuration that are carved up for the iSCSI LUNs (OS is on a separate 2 drive RAID-1). The server has Windows Stora...

Hi Anton, I wasn't suggesting that the server be placed in a DMZ segment! I'd never do that. If I were to build a SAN, it would only ever be connected to an isolated LAN dedicated to iSCSI traffic. I'm just wondering why the base Windows OS can't be the web edition. Also, why not Windows Storage Ser...

Hi, I notice in the system requirements for StarWind SAN the following comment: It is not recommended to install StarWind on Windows Storage server or Web server editions. Why is that? As a purpose built storage appliance, I would have no need for services that would require Windows user or device C...