iSCSI initator differences

jrbanach · Fri Dec 09, 2011 2:48 am

Hi,

What's the difference between the iSCSI initiator built into windows and the Starwind one? Will i get better performance or additional options by using the StarWind initiator?

Fri Dec 09, 2011 4:00 pm

In a nutshell: they have nothing in common except iSCSI client-side protocol they implement.

Yes.

jrbanach wrote:Hi,

What's the difference between the iSCSI initiator built into windows and the Starwind one? Will i get better performance or additional options by using the StarWind initiator?

Phan7 · Mon May 07, 2012 11:25 am

The starwind one is better in general! Supports RAID 0/1 & JBOD over iSCSI - something you can't get away with doing using dynamic disks in windows.

Although the windows client does have full MPIO support and integrates well with WSCS!

Mon May 07, 2012 11:43 am

Video killed radio star (c) ...

Now you all may say "big kiss" to Microsoft for their free initiator

That's the reason we don't develop our one any more.

Phan7 · Mon May 07, 2012 2:01 pm

Their free initiator only has the features there to fit in with the rest of the stuff that's built into windows server, RADIUS, IPSec, iSNS, mount points, CS Vols, MPIO (for the cluster network).

When it comes to doing anything out of the ordinary, as usual, you have to look elsewhere!

You should take a look at the latest soft target for R2, extremely primitive, I can only imagine any new features that end up in there will be related to some other part of the OS where it would fit in nicely.

It would probably take a petition to get thin provisioning included in a future release.

Tue May 08, 2012 10:44 pm

1) It's very difficult to sell or develop some competitor product being included into core OS.

2) Yes, they had actually stripped down features from ex-String Bean target (no RAM disk as a media, no RAW partitions & disks supported, now flat image files supported etc).

Phan7 wrote:Their free initiator only has the features there to fit in with the rest of the stuff that's built into windows server, RADIUS, IPSec, iSNS, mount points, CS Vols, MPIO (for the cluster network).

When it comes to doing anything out of the ordinary, as usual, you have to look elsewhere!

You should take a look at the latest soft target for R2, extremely primitive, I can only imagine any new features that end up in there will be related to some other part of the OS where it would fit in nicely.

It would probably take a petition to get thin provisioning included in a future release.