NVMe Support

[BennoMac]

Hey,

So i plan on Running a 4TB SAN running NVMe Drives with 10G SFP connected on 2 Nodes
a Few questions regarding this setup.

1. Will i get the fast Read/Write speeds of NVMe with Starwind
2. I plan on running Raid 10 for faster speeds and more redunandacy is this best practice?
3. i guess i wont need a cache drive in the setup
4. 1GB per 1TB of SAN so 4GB of RAM can i up this if so will it make any improvements?

[Sergey (staff)]

Hello, BennoMac, and thank you for your questions. StarWind adds virtualization layer to the NVMe device, the answer is - yes, you will get pretty fast Read/Write speeds of NVMe with StarWind. As far as I know, you cannot build hardware RAID on top of NVMe, the only option is software RAID. Please, note, software RAID implementations are NOT supported. StarWind Virtual SAN supports Microsoft Storage Spaces. You do not need a cache drive, as NVMe device is fast, and cache layer located on SSD will not increase performance at all. You can use RAM cache though, 1GB per 1 TB. You can find more info about caching here:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/techni ... ciples.pdf

[BennoMac]

Thanks for the Reply.

As to what i have been told and read Intel NVMe Drives do support hardware raid with the newest Intel Tri-mode Raid controller which i will have as this is a brand new system that will be rolled out.
Glad to know that Starwind does support NVMe drives.

[Sergey (staff)]

Yes, StarWind supports NVMe drives. Also, you might want to check this Best Practices document: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/techni ... ctices.pdf